And so it happened that when they drew their first month's pay, Martin Culpepper and Jake Dolan suggested to the company that they buy Ward a sword to commemorate the victory of the people. And Martin Culpepper made a great presentation speech in which he said that to the infantry, cavalry, and artillery arms of military service, "C" Company had added the "vox populi." But the night after the presentation Oscar Fernald and Watts McHurdie crawled under the captain's tent and stole the sword and pawned it for beer, and there was a sound of revelry by night. When they found the great camp near Springfield, it seemed to John Barclay that all the soldiers in the world were gathered. It is difficult for a boy under a dozen years to remember things consecutively; because boys do not do things consecutively. They flit around like butterflies, and so the picture that they make of events jumps from scene to scene. One film on a roll of John's memory showed a hot August day in the camp of "C" Company; the men are hurrying about the place. The tents are down; the boys--John and Bob--are kicking around the vacant camp looking for trophies. But there the film broke and did not record the fact that Captain Ward put Bob and John on a commissary wagon that stood in a side street as the soldiers moved out. John remembered looking into a street filled with marching soldiers. First the regulars and the artillery came swinging down the street. At their head the boy saw General Lyon, the commanding officer, and around him was a bodyguard whose plumed hats, with the left brim pinned up, caught the boys' eyes. The regulars marched by silently. It was part of their day's work; but following them came a detachment of Germans singing "Marchen Rote," and then the battery of six guns and then the Kansans. Small wonder Captain Gordon Granger told Colonel Mitchel that the Kansas soldiers were only an armed mob. They filed out of Springfield, some in rags and some in tags and some in velvet gowns. They carried guns; but they looked like delegates to a convention, and as the boys saw their own company, they waved their hands, but they were almost ashamed of the shabby clothes of the men from Sycamore Ridge; for a boy always notices clothes on others. When the Germans stopped singing "Marchen Rote," the boys heard Watts McHurdie's high tenor voice start up "The Dutch Companee," and the crowd that was lining the street cheered and cheered. A Missouri regiment followed and more regulars, and then a battery of four guns passed, and then came more Kansans still going to that everlasting convention. And a band came roaring by,--with its crashing brass and rumbling drums,--and then after the band had turned the corner, came Iowa in gray blouses and such other garments as the clothes-lines of the country afforded. They were singing as they passed--a song the boy had never heard, being all about the "happy land of Canaan." And before the sun had set again, after that night, hundreds of those who sang of the happy land were there. In the rear were the ambulances and the ammunition and the hospital vans, and the wagon which held the boys wheeled into the line. After they had passed, the streets were clogged with carts and drays and wagons of all sorts, for the citizens