ptain. Give me ten minutes. I'm
Dr. Wilkins of ---- Hospital."

"O yes, I know of your work. What's the story, Doctor?"

Jason told Pilgrim's history. "She gave him up for me and now I've found
him," he finished. "I want to buy him back, get a furlough and take him
home to her, myself. I've been saving my money."

"You may have him for just what I paid for him, Doctor," said the
captain, who was considerably Jason's senior. "Tell your mother I wish
my own mother were living and that I do this in her memory."

"Thank you, sir," said Jason.

A week later Jason led Pilgrim out of the freight car in which he had
traveled from Washington to a railway station twenty-five miles from
home. The river packets were not running and this was the nearest
station to High Hill. It was noon and cold. Jason mounted and started
south briskly and once more the Ohio valley opened up before him.

It seemed to Jason that he was seeing the hills for absolutely the first
time. And yet that could not be, for back with the first sight of the
distant river came all his old boyish reverence for the headlands. The
last time he had ridden horseback in the hills had been in the West
Virginia circuit, with his father.

For the first time since his interview with the President, Jason began
to think of his father. All his newly awakened sense of gratitude had
been centered on his mother. Did he then owe his father nothing?

It took courage, it took nerve, it took stomach to patch together the
bloody wrecks on the field of battle. It had taken tenacity to an ideal
to starve and toil for his profession as he had done in Baltimore.
Whence had come these qualities to Jason? He thought once more of his
father on that trip on the West Virginian circuit, of the boys expelled
from the church, of Sister Clark, of his own sense of mortification and
his own contempt. And he dropped his head on his breast with a groan.

And so as the sun set, Pilgrim with the scar on his right fore shoulder
and Jason with the scar on his soul that only remorse implants there,
stopped before the cottage in High Hill. And through the window, Jason's
mother saw them. She rushed to the door and Jason, dismounting, ran up
to her, and dropping on his knees, threw his arms about her waist and
sobbed against her bosom:

"O mother! O mother! Forgive me! I didn't realize. I didn't know!" Just
as many, many sons have done before, and just as many more will do,
please God, as long as