e must now do the best that we can for ourselves under extremely
adverse circumstances. Go home. Cultivate your fields. Take care of your
families, and be as good citizens in peace as you have been good
soldiers in war."

There was a hurried consultation among the men. Presently Sergeant
Garrett spoke for the rest and said:

"We will not go home, Captain Duncan, until each one of us has written
orders from you to do so. Some of us fellows have children in our homes,
and the rest of us may have children hereafter. We want them to know, as
the years go by, that we did not desert our cause, even in its dying
hours, that we did not quit the army until we were ordered to quit. We
ask of you, for each of us, a written order to go home, or to go
wherever else you may order us to go."

The Captain fully understood the loyalty of feeling which underlay this
request, and he promptly responded to it. Taking from his pocket a
number of old letters and envelopes, he searched out whatever scraps
there might be of blank paper. Upon these scraps he issued to each man
of his little company a peremptory order to return to his home, with an
added statement in the case of each that he had "served loyally,
bravely, and well, even unto the end."

That night, before their final parting, the little company slept
together in the midst of a cluster of pine trees, with only one sentry
on duty.

The next day came the parting. The captain, with tears dimming his
vision, shook hands with each of his men in turn, saying to each, with
choking utterance: "Good-by! God bless you!"

Then the spokesman of the men, Sergeant Garrett, asked:

"Are you going home, Captain Duncan?"

For twenty seconds the young Captain stared at his men, making no
answer. Then, mastering himself, and speaking as one dazed, he replied:

"Home? Home? On all God's earth I have no home!"

Instantly he put spurs to his horse, half unconsciously turning toward
the sunset.

A moment later he vanished from view, over the crest of a hill.

II

ALONE IN THE HIGH MOUNTAINS

The young man rode long and late that night. His way lay always upward
toward the crests of the high mountains of the Blue Ridge Range.

The roads he traversed were scarcely more than trails--too steep in
their ascent to have been traveled by wagons that might wear them into
thoroughfares. During the many hours of his riding he saw no sign of
human habitation anywhere, and no prospect of fin