The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay was never equaled in any subsequent occupation.  The display of the company in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism.  There was nothing wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had by half the company staining themselves with elderberry juice and going into the woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind trees with bows and arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners.  This, however, was made to seem very like real war.  Traditions of Indian cruelty were still fresh in western Massachusetts.  Behind John’s house in the orchard were some old slate tombstones, sunken and leaning, which recorded the names of Captain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms, who had been killed by Indians in the last century while at work in the meadow by the river, and who slept there in the hope of the glorious resurrection.  Phineas Arms martial name—­was long since dust, and even the mortal part of the great Captain Moses Rice had been absorbed in the soil and passed perhaps with the sap up into the old but still blooming apple-trees.  It was a quiet place where they lay, but they might have heard—­if hear they could—­the loud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the long grass on that sunny slope.  There was a tradition that years ago an Indian, probably the last of his race, had been seen moving along the crest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley which had been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he grew his corn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish.  John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms.  The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; and this was an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with the elderberry Indians.  It was warned in time.  If there was no war-whoop, the killing did n’t count; the artillery man got up and killed the Indian.  The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not only got killed by the regulars, but he got whipped by the home guard at night for staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.

But once a year the company had a superlative parade.  This was when the military company from the north part of the town joined the villagers in a general muster.  This was an infantry company, and not to be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions.  There was a great and natural hatred between the north town boys and the center.  I don’t know why, but no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile.  It was all right for one of either section to “lick” the other if he could, or for half a dozen to “lick” one of the enemy if they caught him alone.  The notion of honor, as of mercy, comes into the boy only