gone to the sword and
the verdict was against him. He would accept it. He would go home, take
the oath of allegiance, resume the law, and, as an American citizen, do
his duty. He had no sense of humiliation, he had no apology to make and
would never have--he had done his duty. He felt no bitterness, and had
no fault to find with his foes, who were brave and had done their duty
as they had seen it; for he granted them the right to see a different
duty from what he had decided was his. And that was all.

Renfrew the Silent was waiting at the smouldering fire. He neither
looked up nor made any comment when General Hunt spoke his
determination. His own face grew more sullen and he reached his hand
into his breast and pulled from his faded jacket the tattered colors
that he once had borne.

"These will never be lowered as long as I live," he said, "nor
afterwards if I can prevent it." And lowered they never were. On a
little island in the Pacific Ocean, this strange soldier, after leaving
his property and his kindred forever, lived out his life among the
natives with this bloodstained remnant of the Stars and Bars over his
hut, and when he died, the flag was hung over his grave, and above that
grave to-day the tattered emblem still sways in southern air.

. . . . .

A week earlier, two Rebels and two Yankees started across the mountain
together--Chad and Dan and the giant Dillon twins--Chad and Yankee Jake
afoot. Up Lonesome they went toward the shaggy flank of Black Mountain
where the Great Reaper had mowed down Chad's first friends. The logs of
the cabin were still standing, though the roof was caved in and the
yard was a tangle of undergrowth. A dull pain settled in Chad's breast,
while he looked, and as they were climbing the spur, he choked when he
caught sight of the graves under the big poplar.

There was the little pen that he had built over his foster-mother's
grave--still undisturbed. He said nothing and, as they went down the
spur, across the river and up Pine Mountain, he kept his gnawing
memories to himself. Only ten years before, and he seemed an old, old
man now. He recognized the very spot where he had slept the first night
after he ran away and awakened to that fearful never-forgotten storm at
sunrise, which lived in his memory now as a mighty portent of the
storms of human passion that had swept around him on many a
battlefield. There was the very tree where he had killed the squirrel
and the rattle