Colonel Mott laid his hand on Billy's shoulder. He had been trying to invent a suitable punishment for Jakie Barsinger. No more custom should come to him through the Commission.

"The President wants you to ride down to the station with him, Billy," he said. "He wants to know whether you remember his father."

As in a dream, Billy climbed into the carriage. The President sat on the rear seat now, and Billy was beside him.

"I remember him like yesterday," he declared. "I remember what he said an' how he looked, an'—" the words crowded upon each other as eagerly as the President's questions, and Billy forgot all save them—the cheering crowd, the wondering, envious eyes of his fellow citizens; he did not even remember that Jakie Barsinger was driving him, Billy Gude, and the President of the United States together. Once he caught a glimpse of Abbie's frightened face, and he waved his hand and the President lifted his hat.

"I wish I could have known about you earlier in the day," said the President, as he stepped down at the railroad station. Then he took Billy's hand in his. "It has been a great pleasure to talk to you."

The engine puffed near at hand, there were new cheers from throats already hoarse with cheering, and the great man was gone, the great day over. For an instant Billy watched the train, his hand uplifted with a thousand other hands in a last salute to the swift-vanishing figure in the observation-car. Then he turned, to meet the unwilling eyes of Jakie Barsinger, helpless to move his carriage in the great crowd. For an instant the recollection of his wrongs overwhelmed him.

"Jakie—" he began. Then he laughed. The crowd was listening, open-mouthed. For the moment, now that the President was gone, he, Billy Gude, was the great man. He stepped nimbly into the carriage. "Coachman," he commanded, "you can drive home."

IX
MARY BOWMAN

Outside the broad gateway which leads into the National Cemetery at Gettysburg and thence on into the great park, there stands a little house on whose porch there may be seen on summer evenings an old woman. The cemetery with its tall monuments lies a little back of her and to her left; before her is the village; beyond, on a little eminence, the buildings of the Theological Seminary; and still farther beyond the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The village is tree-shaded, the hills are set with fine oaks and hickories, the fields are green. It would be difficult to find in all the world an expanse more lovely. Those who have known it in their youth grow homesick for it; their eyes ache and their throats tighten as they remember it. At sunset it is bathed in purple light, its trees grow darker, its hills more shadowy, its hollows deeper and more mysterious. Then, lifted above the dark masses of the trees, one may see marble shafts and domes turn to liquid gold.

The little old woman, sitting with folded hands, is Mary Bowman, whose husband was lost on this field. The battle will soon be fifty years in the past, she has been for that long a widow. She has brought up three children, two sons and a daughter. One of her sons is a merchant, one is a clergyman, and her daughter is well and happily married. Her own life of activity is past; she is waited upon tenderly and loved dearly by her children and her grandchildren. She was born in this village, she has almost never been away. From here her husband went to war, here he is buried among thousands of unknown dead, here she nursed the wounded and dying, here she will be buried herself in the Evergreen cemetery, beyond the National cemetery.