he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at
last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could
look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see
them truly. He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised
them.

With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet
manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he
would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He
had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was
but the great death. He was a man.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath
his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover
tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as
flowers.

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,
despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of
liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for
he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to
be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red
sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been
an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He
turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows, cool brooks--an existence of soft and eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden
rain clouds.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

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