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Bugler Swanson blew "taps," after which the graves were carefully filled and the tops sodded so that roving Moros would not afterwards find and desecrate these graves, sacred to the American people. All in good time the American military authorities would send and exhume these remains, transferring them to marked resting places in military cemeteries.
The low, sodded, and verdant ramparts, the sombre palisades, now darker than ever with water, the roof of a house or two, the tall, solitary flagstaff, with its halyards blown steadily out into a curve that appeared traced in immovable lines in the air, were all soon to be seen though no sign of animated life could be discovered.
But there was no record of plague there, nor did it in any wise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the hardly dried lettering-ink.
At intervals of every one hundred yards, piles of ties surmounted by rails were upon fire. These were thrown down by our men. About half a mile beyond the road, in a finely sodded valley, the troops were halted for the night, pickets posted, and the men prepared their meals closely in the rear of their stacks. The night was a pleasant one.
The really good house is bright and airy. Consequently the demonstration house should be set back from the street and its front yard should be deep enough not only to assure privacy from the street, but also to permit at least a well sodded grass plot. The rear yard will, of course, extend across the whole lot. Or the rear yard may be 100 feet deep.
To make a cave, you lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where the heavy padlocked door closed it.
Freshness was there, the mark of an eager, vigorous hand. The matted blue grass which sodded the yard had been cut and trimmed to lines along the path. A great and happy change had come over the old place, so long under the shadow. People stopped to admire it as they passed. "Well, well; it's the doin's of that boy, Joe Newbolt!" they said. Mrs.
Long ago would its stately trees have been destroyed, its streamlet set to turning wheels, and Nature forced to express herself on those many acres, in corn and potatoes, instead of her own graceful and varied selection of greenery; or, mayhap, its underbrush cut out, its slopes sodded, its springs buried in pipes and put to use, and the whole "improved" into dull insipidity, all this, but for the will of one man who held the title to the grounds, and rated it so highly, that, though willing to sell, no one could come up to his terms.
Steamers plied up and down the river, bringing provision, ammunition, and new cannon, and soon the fort was ready to stand the most determined siege. Fort St. Philip, across the river, though not so imposing a military work, was more powerful. It was built of masonry, and heavily sodded over all points exposed to fire.
But even now she could not be sure that it was not all imagination the effect of her own self-consciousness, after what had passed between herself and Laura's lover. As she walked down the drive she saw the jobbing gardener had returned and was continuing to lay sods on the ground where the privet hedge had been. The thought passed through her mind that it looked like a new grave fresh sodded.
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