Meanwhile Zeke Watkins, with a squad of homeward-bound soldiers,
was trudging toward Opinquake. They soon began to look into one
another's faces in something like dismay. But little provision was
in their wallets when they had started, for there was little to
draw upon, and that furnished grudgingly, as may well be supposed.
Zeke had not cared. He remembered the continuous feasting that had
attended his journey to camp, and supposed that he would only have
to present himself to the roadside farmhouses in order to enjoy
the fat of the land. This hospitality he proposed to repay
abundantly by camp reminiscences in which it would not be
difficult to insinuate that the hero of the scene was present.
In contrast to these rose-hued expectations, doors were slammed in
their faces, and they were treated little better than tramps. "I
suppose the people near Boston have been called on too often and
imposed on, too," Zeke reasoned rather ruefully. "When we once get
over the Connecticut border we'll begin to find ourselves at
home;" and spurred by hunger and cold, as well as hope, they
pushed on desperately, subsisting on such coarse provisions as
they could obtain, sleeping in barns when it stormed, and not
infrequently by a fire in the woods.
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