St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1897-03-26
The NeighbOrhoOd Rooster.
Maurice Thompson in the Cosmopolitan.

cred spiteiully for twenty minutes III
the patchy copse of oak bushes and
pine saplings that fringed a stony
fell. The noise OF it echoed in the
mountain holows and ratified
against their lchen blotched es-
carpments; then suddenly there broke
a stunning blast from the hilltop,
where the ten-gun battery had been
unmasked, and on came gray col
umn packed close and charging head
long at a run. A moment OF surprise
and inaction on the part of the blue
skirmishers was followed by panic;
every man took to his heels for his
own safety, and devil catch the
slowest.
AT one end OF the zigzag scrawl Of
Federals, a youthful soldier, named
Ryan Melville, was barely missed by
a round shot which plowed the stony
earth beside his feet. He turned
about and fairly few over a black
Jack spur, while heavy swarm of
iron bees whined and buzzed around
him. His legs were strenuousIy
waggling under him when shell hit
little hickory tree, around which he
was shying. For a moment after the
explosion, which was at the very
middle OF the trees tough bole, the
air was dim with smoke and puver-
lied wood.
Ryan Melville scarcely knew that
he was wounded, so cleverly did fate
send the keen iron splinter from the
bomb cutting through. his haunch;
but Involuntary he put up his hand
and rubbed his left eye, which was
full of hickory dust. And he ran on,
while the noise behind HIM seemed to
bump against his back like great
waves, impelling him faster and
faster, down the opposite side of the
ridge, over three or four jagged
wrinkles and ravines, and then deeper
into a wooded, rocky vale, until
presently he began to limp, as be
painted along beside clear, bubble
dotted brook.
About this time, Melville, being a
boy and imaginative, felt one OF those
elemental visitations OF irrevelant
fancy. He thought of what a delight
it would be to cast fly-a brown
hackle or a Lord Baltimore-upon
those swirling pools. Then, all at
once, he became aware of a strange
silence in place OF the cannon pound
ing and the cracking of musketry.
The little fight was over. Sherman
had felt out for Johnston's line and
found it, that was all. Tomorrow,
perhaps, the hills would once again
grind together in the grip of great
battle.
The boys head swan vaguely. His
hand went to his thigh and came
away clotted with dark blood. He
tossed his gun aside, and just then he
saw a fine red chicken cock standing
on a log. 1t was brave-looking
rooster, with high, congested comb
and a great arched and respondent
red tail. As Melville sank down and
was becoming insensible, this fiery
cock stretched its gorgeous neck and
crowed, so that the wood echoed and
re-echoed with its clarion challenge.
All through the dreadful days and
nights of the hospital, while fever
burned him and gangrene threatened,
Melville's mind harbored the ripping
OF that brook and the growing of
that rooster. When he went home
to Michigan, discharged and half
committed to the fate of a lifelong
cripple, the bubbling of the chill cur
rent and the cheerful cock.voice still
haunted him. And even after the
war was ended, and he had regained
all of his boyhood's vitality and
rounded superbly into athletic man
hood, he was not cured of his dream
of going back to angle where the
skirmish had ended. When his uncle
who had made the most OF hayinl
while the war sunshine lasted, in thu
field of Chicago speculations, CAV,
up the ghost, and also an immens,
fortune, all to Melville, the opportu
nifty came, and forth away went tn,
happy young man, with rod and fly
book and creel, back to the brool
amid the Southern hills.
An angler is everybody's friend
Melville found most engaging folk il
the cabins of that lonely region. H
chummed with Bud Peevy, maste
mountaineer, and one day, over