"I'm going! I'm going back to that place. I could find it. I know where I knocked that feller down with the butt of my gun when my ammunition gave out. I know exactly where I stood when the captain said, 'Give 'em hell, Carolus!' The captain and me, we was pretty intimate."
The blind man smiled, his busy hands going on with their unending work. When he smiled, his face was indescribably beautiful; one's heart ached for the woman who fifty years ago had had to die and leave him.
"Ellen!" he called.
Ellen appeared in the doorway, in her short, unbecoming gingham dress. She had inherited none of her father's beauty, and the freshness of her youth was gone. She looked at her father kindly enough, but her voice was harsh. Ellen's life, too, had suffered from war.
"Ellen, Carolus wants me to go with him to Gettysburg in September. A great monument is to be dedicated, and Carolus says our names are to be on it. May I go?"
Ellen turned swiftly away. Sometimes her father's cheerfulness nearly broke her heart.
"I guess you can go if you want to."
"Thank you, Ellen."
"I've reckoned it all out," said Carolus. "We can do it for twenty dollars. We ought to get transportation. Somebody ought to make a present to the veterans, the Government ought to, or the trusts, or the railroads."
"Where will we stay?" asked Gunner Criswell. His hands trembled suddenly and he laid down the stiff reeds.