Half an hour or more had elapsed, and Asa still sat on the log by the doorway, his head buried in thought. He could hear the strokes of Job's axe, from where the boy was cutting firewood for the evening on the edge of the clearing. As they fell on the air with their sharp, metallic ring, one after another, the old man's fancy likened them to the deadly noises of the battle-field, whither his boy was making his way.
But he regretted nothing—no, nothing, save that the act of reparation, of atonement, had not been made long before.
There came with abrupt suddenness another sound—the unfamiliar sound of a stranger's voice addressing him. Asa looked up, rousing himself from his reverie with difficulty. He saw that two men with rods, and fishing baskets, and camping packs on their backs, were standing in front of him. Their faces were in the shadow, but he slowly made out the foremost one to be the deputy marshal, Norman Hazzard.
"So here's where you moved to, eh?" the deputy marshal was asking, by way of not unfriendly salutation.
Asa stared hard for a minute at this astonishing apparition. Then his bewildered tongue found words.
"If you're lookin' for my son," he said proudly, "he's gone back to jine his regiment—to do his duty!"
Hazzard stared in turn. "Gone!" he exclaimed, "when?"
"This very day," rejoined Asa, "not an hour ago. He saw it was right, and he went!"
The deputy marshal threw up his hands in a gesture of despairing amazement. "Why, man alive!" he cried, "they'll shoot him like a dog!"