e'll take to the mountains and keep up the war forever. The
country is ours, what's to hinder us?"

He spoke passionately, and at each sharp exclamation the black horse rose
on his haunches and pawed the air.

Dan shook his head.

"I'm out on parole," he replied, "but as soon as I'm exchanged, I'll fight
if Virginia wants me. How about you, Pinetop?"

The mountaineer shuffled his feet in the mud and stood solemnly surveying
the landscape.

"Wall, I don't understand much about this here parole business," he
replied. "It seems to me that a slip of paper with printed words on it that
I have to spell out as I go, is a mighty poor way to keep a man from
fightin' if he can find a musket. I ain't steddyin' about this parole, but
Marse Robert told me to go home to plant my crop, and I am goin' home to
plant it."

"It is all over, I think," said Dan with a quivering lip, as he stared at
the ruined meadows. The smart was still fresh, and it was too soon for him
to add, with the knowledge that would come to him from years,--"it is
better so." Despite the grim struggle and the wasted strength, despite the
impoverished land and the nameless graves that filled it, despite even his
own wrecked youth and the hard-fought fields where he had laid it
down--despite all these a shadow was lifted from his people and it was
worth the price.

They passed on, while the black horse pawed the dust, and the rider hurled
oaths at their retreating figures. At a little house a few yards down the
road they stopped to ask for food, and found a woman weeping at the kitchen
table, with three small children clinging to her skirts. Her husband had
fallen at Five Forks, she said, the safe was empty, and the children were
crying for bread. Then Dan slipped into her hand the silver he had borrowed
from the Union soldier, and the two returned penniless to the road.

"At least we are men," he said almost apologetically to Pinetop, and the
next instant turned squarely in the mud, for a voice from the other side
had called out shrilly:--

"Hi, Marse Dan, whar you gwine now?"

"Bless my soul, it's Big Abel," he exclaimed.

Black as a spade and beaming with delight, the negro emerged from the swarm
upon the roadside and grasped Dan's outstretched hands.

"Whar you gwine dis away, Marse Dan?" he inquired again.

"I'm going home, Big Abel," responded Dan, as they walked on in a row of
three. "No, don't shout, you scamp; I'd rather lie down and die upon