read it through--and then Judge
Priest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he had
chosen so public a place for this thing.

He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet.
Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floor
to where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his side
he halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there,
trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column and
read what was there--and lifted a face all glorified with a perfect
understanding.

"Eddie!" said the older man--"Eddie!" He uttered a name of boyhood
affection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; and
it was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb--as though out
of the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. "Eddie!" he
said a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving for
forgiveness.

"Brother Abner!" said the other man. "Oh, Brother Abner!" he said--and
that was all he did say--all he had need to say, for he was on his feet
now, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms.

Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it come
out of his throat--only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As a
cheer it was a miserable failure.

Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, the
brothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and went
away. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness of
the stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were all
up on their feet.

"Mind that top step, Abner!" they heard the younger man say. "Wait! I'll
help you down."

That was all that was heard, except a scuffling sound of uncertainly
placed feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed down
the long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night--that was
all, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorus
such as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling in
a large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps,
that Judge Priest should speak first.

"The trouble with this here Camp is jest this," he said: "it's got a lot
of snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust out
cryin' when they oughter be happy!" And then, as if to show how deeply
he felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Pri