Lonely, patient, confirmed in courtesy, he passed on his way, and his
little army returned to camp in the strip of pines.
"'I've done my best for you,' that's what he said," sobbed Pinetop. "'I've
done my best for you,'--and I kissed old Traveller's mane."
Without replying, Dan went back into the woods and flung himself down on
the spread of tags. Now that the fight was over all the exhaustion of the
last four years, the weakness after many battles, the weariness after the
long marches, had gathered with accumulated strength for the final
overthrow.
For three days he remained in camp in the pine woods, and on the third,
after waiting six hours in a hard rain outside his General's tent, he
secured the little printed slip which signified to all whom it might
concern that he had become a prisoner upon his parole. Then, after a
sympathetic word to the rest of the division, shivering beneath the
sassafras bushes before the tent, he shook hands with his comrades under
arms, and started with Pinetop down the muddy road. The war was over, and
footsore, in rags and with aching limbs, he was returning to the little
valley where he had hoped to trail his glory.
Down the long road the gray rain fell straight as a curtain, and on either
side tramped the lines of beaten soldiers who were marching, on their word
of honour, to their distant homes. The abandoned guns sunk deep in the mud,
the shivering men lying in rags beneath the bushes, and the charred remains
of campfires among the trees were the last memories Dan carried from the
four years' war.
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