Watts tried to call them back. "What's the use your gettin' killed?" he
shouted.
"Why not?" answered Lige, who, like the others, was increasing his speed
when old "Wimby" rose up suddenly from the roadside ahead of them, and
motioned them frantically to go back. "They're laid out along the fence,
waitin' fer ye," he warned them. "Git out the road. Come by the fields.
Per the Lord's sake, spread!" Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he
dropped down into the weeds again. Lige and those with him paused, and the
whole body came to a halt while the leaders consulted. There was a sound
of metallic clicking and a thin rattle of steel. From far to the rear came
the voice of old Wilkerson:
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground--"
A few near him, as they stood waiting, began to take up the burden of the
song, singing in slow time like a dirge; then those further away took it
up; it spread, reached the leaders; they, too, began to sing, taking off
their hats as they joined in; and soon the whole concourse, solemn,
earnest, and uncovered, was singing--a thunderous requiem for John
Harkless.
The sun was swinging lower and the edges of the world were embroidered
with gold while that deep volume of sound shook the air, the song of a
stern, savage, just cause--sung, perhaps, as some of the ancestors of
these men sang with Hampden before the bristling walls of a hostile city.
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