boy's voice throbbed with pain. His eyes, dilated with
horror at the realization of the older man's admission, fixed their gaze
accusingly on James Thorold. "You weren't a--a deserter?" He breathed
the word fearfully.

"I was a bounty-jumper."

"Oh!" Peter Thorold's shoulders drooped as if under the force of a vital
blow. Vaguely as he knew the term, the boy knew only too well the burden
of disgrace that it carried. Once, in school, he had heard an old tutor
apply it to some character of history whom he had especially despised.
Again, in a home where he had visited, he had heard another old man use
the phrase in contempt for some local personage who had attempted to
seek public office. Bounty-jumper! Its province expressed to the lad's
mind a layer of the inferno beneath the one reserved for the Benedict
Arnolds and the Aaron Burrs. Vainly he bugled to his own troops of
self-control; but they, too, were deserters in the calamity. He flung
his arms across the table, surrendering to his sobs.

Almost impassively James Thorold watched him, as if he himself had gone
so far back into his thought of the past that he could not bridge the
gap to Peter now. With some thought of crossing the chasm he took up his
tale of dishonor. Punctuated by the boy's sobs it went on.

"I came back to Chicago and drew the money from the bank. I knew I
couldn't go back to the practise of law. I changed my name to Thorold
and started in business as an army contractor. I made money. The money
that's made us rich, the money that's sending me to Forsland"--a
bitterness not in his voice before edged his mention of the
embassy--"came from that bounty that the provost marshal gave me."

He turned his back upon the sobbing boy, walking over to the window
and staring outward upon the April brightness of the noonday ere he
spoke again. "You know of the Nineteenth's record? They were at
Nashville, and they were at Chattanooga after my colonel came back,
dead. I went out of Chicago when his body was brought in. Then Turchin
took command of the brigade. The Nineteenth went into the big fights.
They were at Chickamauga. Benton fell there. He'd been in Judge Adams's
office with me. After I'd come back he'd joined the regiment. The day
the news of Chickamauga came I met Judge Adams on Washington Street.
He knew me. He looked at me as Peter might have looked at Judas."

Slowly Peter Thorold raised his head from his arms, staring at the
man beside the wind