it in his hands and dreamed
of Betty. When Big Abel touched him on the arm he turned with a laugh and
struggled to his feet. "I was resting," he explained, as they walked on.
"It is good to rest like that in mind and body; to keep out thoughts and
let the dreams come as they will."

"De bes' place ter res' is on yo' own do' step," Big Abel responded, and
quickening their pace, they went more rapidly over the rough clay roads.

It was at the end of this day that they came, in the purple twilight, to a
big brick house and found there a woman who lived alone with the memories
of a son she had lost at Gettysburg. At their knock she came herself, with
a few old servants, prompt, tearful, and very sad; and when she saw Dan's
coat by the light of the lamp behind her, she put out her hands with a cry
of welcome and drew him in, weeping softly as her white head touched his
sleeve.

"My mother is dead, thank God," he murmured, and at his words she looked up
at him a little startled.

"Others have come," she said, "but they were not like you; they did not
have your voice. Have you been always poor like this?"

He met her eyes smiling.

"I have not always been a soldier," was his answer.

For a moment she looked at him as if bewildered; then taking a lamp from an
old servant, she led the way upstairs to her son's room, and laid out the
dead man's clothes upon his bed.

"We keep house for the soldiers now," she said, and went out to make things
ready.

As he plunged into the warm water and dried himself upon the fresh linen
she had left, he heard the sound of passing feet in the broad hall, and
from the outside kitchen there floated a savoury smell that reminded him of
Chericoke at the supper hour. With the bath and the clean clothes his old
instincts revived within him, and as he looked into the glass he caught
something of the likeness of his college days. Beau Montjoy was not starved
out after all, he thought with a laugh, he was only plastered over with
malaria and dirt.

For three days he remained in the big brick house lying at ease upon a sofa
in the library, or listening to the tragic voice of the mother who talked
of her only son. When she questioned him about Pickett's charge, he raised
himself on his pillows and talked excitedly, his face flushing as if from
fever.

"Your son was with Armistead," he said, "and they all went down like
heroes. I can see old Armistead now with his hat on his sword's point as he