Trembling, weak with emotion, her eyes on the silent figure, Mrs. Smith hurried up to the fence. Her feet made no noise in the dust and grass, and they were close upon him before he knew of them. The oldest boy ran a little ahead. He will never forget that figure, that face. It will always remain as something epic, that return of the private. He fixed his eyes on the pale face covered with a ragged beard.
"Who are you, sir?" asked the wife, or, rather, started to ask, for he turned, stood a moment, and then cried:
"Emma!"
"Edward!"
The children stood in a curious row to see their mother kiss this bearded, strange man, the elder girl sobbing sympathetically with her mother. Illness had left the soldier partly deaf, and this added to the strangeness of his manner.
But the youngest child stood away, even after the girl had recognized her father and kissed him. The man turned then to the baby, and said in a curiously unpaternal tone:
"Come here, my little man; don't you know me?" But the baby backed away under the fence and stood peering at him critically.
"My little man!" What meaning in those words! This baby seemed like some other woman's child, and not the infant he had left in his wife's arms. The war had come between him and his baby—he was only a strange man to him, with big eyes; a soldier, with mother hanging to his arm, and talking in a loud voice.
"And this is Tom," the private said, drawing the oldest boy to him. "He'll come and see me. He knows his poor old pap when he comes home from the war."
The mother heard the pain and reproach in his voice and hastened to apologize.