orgne and through the Rigolets they swept into
Pontchartrain, and near the day's close saw the tide-low, sombre but
blessed shore beyond which a scant half-hour's railway ride lay the city
they called home.

Across the waters westward, where the lake's margin, black-rimmed with
cypresses, lapsed into a watery horizon, and the sun was going down in
melancholy splendor, ran unseen that northbound railway by which four
years earlier they had set off for the war with ranks full and stately,
with music in the air and with thousands waving them on. Now not a note,
not a drum-tap, not a boast nor a jest illumined their return. In the
last quarter-hour aboard, when every one was on the lower deck about the
forward gangway, Hilary and Anna, having chanced to step up upon a coil
of rope, found it easier, in the unconscious press, to stay there than
to move on, and in keeping with his long habit as a leader he fell into
a lively talk with those nearest him,--Sam and Charlie close in front,
Bartleson and Mandeville just at his back,--to lighten the general
heaviness. At every word his listeners multiplied, and presently, in a
quiet but insistent tone, came calls for a "speech" and the "ladies'
man."

"No," he gaily replied, "oh, no, boys!" But his words went on and became
something much like what they craved. As he ceased came the silent,
ungreeted landing. Promptly followed the dingy train's short run up the
shore of the New Canal, and then its stop athwart St. Charles Street,
under no roof, amid no throng, without one huzza or cry of welcome, and
the prompt dispersal of the outwardly burdenless wanderers, in small
knots afoot, up-town, down-town, many of them trying to say over again
those last words from the chief hero of their four years' trial by fire.
The effort was but effort, no full text has come down; but their drift
seems to have been that, though disarmed, unliveried, and disbanded,
they could remain true soldiers: That the perfect soldier loves peace,
loathes war: That no man can be such who cannot, whether alone or among
thousands of his fellows, strive, suffer and wait with magnanimous
patience, stake life and fortune, and, in extremity, fight like a
whirlwind, for the victories of peace: That every setting sun will rise
again _if it is a true sun:_ That good-night was not good-by: and that,
as for their old nickname, no one can ever be a whole true ladies' man
whose _aim_ is not at some title far above and beyond i