hink that he saw and would not
answer. The veterans passed, and Adam drew back and was lost in the
crowd.

But Adam had a parade of his own. In the evening, when the music and the
speeches were over and the half-dozen graves of those of Fosterville's
young men who had been brought home had been heaped with flowers, and
Fosterville sat on doorsteps and porches talking about the day, Adam put
on a gray uniform and walked from one end of the village to the other.
These were people who had known him always; the word flew from step to
step. Many persons spoke to him, some laughed, and a few jeered. To no
one did Adam pay any heed. Past the house of Newton Towne, past the
store of Ed Green, past the wide lawn of Henry Foust, walked Adam, his
hands clasped behind his back, as though to make more perpendicular than
perpendicularity itself that stiff backbone. Henry Foust ran down the
steps and out to the gate.

"Oh, Adam!" cried he.

Adam stopped, stock-still. He could see Peter Allinson and Newton Towne,
and even Ed Green, on Henry's porch. They were all having ice-cream and
cake together.

"Well, what?" said he, roughly.

"Won't you shake hands with me?"

"No," said Adam.

"Won't you come in?"

"Never."

Still Henry persisted.

"Some one might do you harm, Adam."

"Let them!" said Adam.

Then Adam walked on alone. Adam walked alone for forty years.

Not only on Memorial Day did he don his gray uniform and make the
rounds of the village. When the Fosterville Grand Army Post met on
Friday evenings in the post room, Adam managed to meet most of the
members either going or returning. He and his gray suit became gradually
so familiar to the village that no one turned his head or glanced up
from book or paper to see him go by. He had from time to time a new
suit, and he ordered from somewhere in the South a succession of gray,
broad-brimmed military hats. The farther the war sank into the past,
the straighter grew old Adam's back, the prouder his head. Sometimes,
early in the forty years, the acquaintances of his childhood, especially
the women, remonstrated with him.

"The war's over, Adam," they would say. "Can't you forget it?"

"Those G.A.R. fellows don't forget it," Adam would answer. "They haven't
changed their principles. Why should I change mine?"

"But you might make up with Henry."

"That's nobody's business but my own."

"But when you were children you were never separated. Make up, Adam."

"Wh