hand
on the fence, choking down an uncertain groan now and then, digging into
the snow with his foot, while Palmer watched him.

"I must bid yer good-bye, Dougl's," he said at last. "I've a long tramp
afore me to-night. Mebbe worse. Mayhap I mayn't see you agin; men can't
hev a grip on the next hour, these days. I'm glad we 're friends.
Whatever comes afore mornin', I'm glad o' that!"

"Have you no more to say to me?"

"Yes, Dougl's,--'s for my little girl,--ef so be as I should foller my
boy sometime, I'd wish you'd be friends to Dode, Dougl's. Yes! I
would,"--hesitating, something wet oozing from his small black eye, and
losing itself in the snuffy wrinkles.

Palmer was touched. It was a hard struggle with pain that had wrung out
that tear. The old man held his hand a minute, then turned to the road.

"Whichever of us sees Geordy first kin tell him t' other's livin' a
true-grit honest life, call him Yankee or Virginian,--an' that's enough
said! So good bye, Dougl's!"

Palmer mounted his horse and galloped off to the camp, the old man
plodding steadily down the road. When the echo of the horse's hoofs had
ceased, a lean gangling figure came from out of the field-brush, and met
him.

"Why, David boy! whar were ye to-night?" Scofield's voice had grown
strangely tender in the last hour.

Gaunt hesitated. He had not the moral courage to tell the old man he had
enlisted.

"I waited. I must air the church,--it is polluted with foul smells."

Scofield laughed to himself at David's "whimsey," but he halted, going
with the young man as he strode across the field. He had a dull
foreboding of the end of the night's battle: before he went to it, he
clung with a womanish affection to anything belonging to his home, as
this Gaunt did. He had not thought the poor young man was so dear to
him, until now, as he jogged along beside him, thinking that before
morning he might be lying dead at the Gap. How many people would care?
David would, and Dode, and old Bone.

Gaunt hurried in,--he ought to be in camp, but he could not leave the
house of God polluted all night,--opening the windows, even carrying the
flag outside. The emblem of freedom, of course,--but----He hardly knew
why he did it. There were flags on every Methodist chapel, almost: the
sect had thrown itself into the war _con amore_. But Gaunt had fallen
into that sect by mistake; his animal nature was too weak for it: as for
his feeling about the church, he had j