Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/436

But Uncle Luther slept on, wholly unconscious of his danger.

Jonathan Dowell, returning from the village, saw a sinister glare in the shop windows. He rushed into the room, seized the old man, and lifted him swiftly to one side. Then he beat out the fire with a gunny sack.

Uncle Luther sat up, trembling and terrified. His wooden leg was gone. It had burned almost to the stump, and the charred remains were still smoking.

Jonathan DowelPs voice rang with anger.

"What won't you do next, father?" he said. "You've set yourself on fire, and nearly burned up the shop. That wooden leg of yours cost me just fifty dollars, and it'll be a long time before I can afford another."

And then he saw dimly the agony in his father's face, and he softened. He was not a bad man, nor even a harsh man—only thoughtless. "You must learn to be more careful, father," he said gently, and yet insistently, as if he talked to a child.

Uncle Luther was glad when his son went away. He crept to his little back room like a wounded dog, and lay down on the bed. Old age had made him slow, and he could not realize at first the full magnitude of his disaster; but he knew that he had deeply angered his son.

"Too bad to trouble Jonathan an' his wife," he muttered. "Cory is so thrifty an' partic'lar. I'm careless, I know it. I'm gettin' old." And then after a time his mind reverted to the earlier interests of the day, and he said aloud: "I wisht Tommy'd got it."

News travels quickly in a small town, and the next morning the sympathetic and the curious came to condole with Uncle Luther, and to examine the remains of the fifty-dollar leg, and to point out where the fire had charred the chair. They went about solemnly, as at a funeral, glancing sideways from the corners of their eyes, and yet not missing anything.

Among the very first to call was Captain Enoch Bradley, who was a hearty, warm-blooded, irascible old fellow, and his bluff sympathy went far toward solacing Uncle Luther in his affliction.

"'Twan't so bad as if you hadn't lost it before," he comforted.

But Uncle Luther had no mind for treating his loss frivolously. The years had crushed all of the humor out of him, and left him only tragedy.

"I was thinkin'," he said, "that now I can't march, p'raps you—p'raps Amery—might let Tommy have it——"

Captain Enoch frowned darkly, but Uncle Luther hurried on:

He's more commandin' than I be, er ever was, er ever will be, an' he's had practice——"

"Oh, you'll be ready to march by Decoration Day," interrupted Captain Enoch.

"It's good of you to say so," said Uncle Luther, "but I jus' can't do it. Tommy's the man;" and then he added wistfully, "I wisht I could see Tommy."

But Uncle Tommy did not come. Uncle Luther heard, however, that Uncle Tommy had been appointed marshal of the parade, and he was glad of it. For himself, he was busied after the first day or two with a stout piece of ash, which he slowly whittled down with a draw-shave to the proportions of a wooden leg. It would not do as well as a regular artificial leg, such as the one he had been wearing, but he hoped that it would serve him for the Memorial Day exercises. He still cherished a desire to march with the parade, although he knew that

"To point out where the fire had charred the chair."