“Bless her—­and you, too!” murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his throat.  “I’ll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don’t you fret—­it will come back.  Yes! it will come back, double, the day I catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!”

He dashed away with a strange cry.  Bart, half decided that he was demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and thoughtful over the peculiar incident.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Bart got through with his supper, did his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother, made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the other, and helped his sisters in various ways.

Bart was soon in the midst of the fray.  Every live boy in Pleasantville was in evidence about the village pleasure grounds, the common and the hill.  Group after group greeted Bart with excited exclamations.  He was a general favorite with the small boys, always ready to assist or advise them, and an acknowledged leader with those of his own age.

He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights.  Then he got mixed up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited announcement that something unusual was going on there.

The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.

“Run!” shouted an excited voice, “she’s going off.”

“No, she ain’t,” pronounced another scoffingly—­“ain’t lighted yet—­no one’s got the nerve to do it.”

Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem.  He had noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown fellow who had gone around with his hands in his pockets sneering at the innocent fun the smaller boys were indulging in, and bragging about his own especial Fourth of July supply of fireworks which were to come from some mysterious source not clearly defined.  The Wacker brothers belonged to a crowd Bart did not train with usually, but as Dale espied him and seized his arm energetically, Bart did not draw away, respecting the occasion and its courtesies.

“You’re the very fellow!” declared Dale.

“You bet he is!” cried two others, crowding up and slapping Bart on the back.  “He won’t crawfish.  Give him the punk, Dale.”

The person addressed extended a lighted piece of punk.

“Yes, take it, Stirling,” he said.  “Show him, boys.”

“Yes, you’ll have to show me,” suggested Bart significantly.  “What’s the mystery, anyhow?”

“No mystery at all,” answered Dale, “only a surprise.  See it—­well, it’s loaded.”

“Clean to the muzzle!” bubbled over an excited urchin.

They were all pointing to the top of the hill.  Bart understood, for clearly outlined against the light of the rising moon stood the grim old sentinel that had done duty as a patriotic reminder of the Civil War for many a year.