d passed to that farther West from whose vague
savannahs no adventurer has ever returned.

"He must have died on his feet," said my uncle gravely, tenderly.

"Yes, he went the way he wished to go," I replied with a painful stress
in my throat.

Together we took him up and bore him to the house, and placed him on the
couch whereon he had been wont to rest during the day.

I moved like a man in a dream. It was all incredible, benumbing.
Tenderly I disposed his head on its pillow and drew his hands across
his breast. "Here is the end of a good man," I said. "Another soldier of
the Union mustered out."

His hands, strong, yet singularly refined, appealed to me with poignant
suggestion. What stern tasks they had accomplished. What brave deeds
they had dared. In spite of the hazards of battle, notwithstanding the
perils of the forests, the raft, the river, after all the hardships of
the farm, they remained unscarred and shapely. The evidence of good
blood was in their slender whiteness. Honorable, skilful, indefatigable
hands,--now forever at rest.

My uncle slipped away to notify the coroner, leaving me there, alone,
with the still and silent form, which had been a dominant figure in my
world. For more than half a century those gray eyes and stern lips had
influenced my daily life. In spite of my growing authority, in spite of
his age he had been a force to reckon with up to the very moment of his
death. He was not a person to be ignored. All his mistakes, his
weaknesses, faded from my mind, I remembered only his heroic side. His
dignity, his manly grace were never more apparent than now as he lay
quietly, as though taking his midday rest.

A breath of pathos rose from the open book upon his table. His hat, his
shoes, his gloves all spoke of his unconquerable energy. I thought of
the many impatient words I had spoken to him, and they would have filled
me with a wave of remorse had I not known that our last day together had
been one of perfect understanding. His final night with us had been
entirely happy, and he had gone away as he had wished to go, in the
manner of a warrior killed in action. His unbending soul had kept his
body upright to the end.

All that day I went about the house with my children like one whose
world had suddenly begun to crumble. The head of my house was gone.
Over and over again I stole softly into his room unable to think of him
as utterly cold and still.

For seventy years he had faced t