All the way down Park Lane the band played its very best and loudest as
if calling from afar to those comrades who lay sleeping beneath the
pines and oaks of the little cemetery. And just as the Green Valley
folks came in sight of the white headstones the Spring Road procession
came tramping over the old bridge, and Elmwood, with its flags and
band, was coming up the new South Road. The three towns met nicely at
the very gates of the cemetery and together made the sort of sound and
presented the sort of sight that lingers in the heart long after other
things have faded from one's memory.

Then the bands grew still and there was quiet, a quiet that every
minute grew deeper so that the noisiest youngster grew round-eyed and
the fat sleek horses moved never a hoof. And then, sweet and soft
through the waiting, hushed air, came the notes of Major Rand's cornet.
He was playing for his comrades as he had played at Shiloh, at
Chickamauga and many another place in the Southland. He played all
their old favorites and then very, very softly the cornet wailed--"We
are tenting to-night on the old camp ground"--and somewhere beside it
little Jim Tumley began to sing.

From the high blue sky and the softly stirring tree-tops the words seem
to drop into little hearts and big hearts and the sweet, melting
sadness of them misted the eyes. When the last feathery echo had died
away the men in blue passed two by two through the cemetery gate.
Reverend Campbell, who had been their chaplain, said a short prayer.
At its end the children, with their arms full of flowers, crowded up
and the men in blue stopped at every grave. The little boys planted
their flags at the head and the little girls scattered the blossoms
deep.