The hidden hut behind the hidden bay was empty.
The boy and the officer searched hastily and fearfully.
"He is in the woods. Oh, you know—come!"
Behind the terror-stricken son the officer plunged into the thicket. Gloomy shades surrounded him. Warm breaths and new odors caressed him. Almost lifted out of the body by these new sensations, he followed with speeding feet.
"Help! Quick!" The shrill voice recalled him. Before the officer knew it, he was upon a figure kneeling beside a body under a great tree.
"Father! Father! He has forgiven you. It is all right!"
But the pleading voice of the lad faltered into an awful silence. The soldier put his hand upon the penitent's head. It was warm. The dead man's arms were outstretched upon the great tree. His body was upon the huge roots. His lips were as if he had but just kissed the bark.
Did his sin at the last restrain him, that he dared not to touch the soil of America, and fondle it as his own?
He had died unpardoned: it was to be, that he should be tortured to the end. But as to when he died, they could not tell—for his strong limbs were set; the swarming Southern ants had not desecrated him, and the moaning tree seemed to be explaining that she had kept him warm upon her lap.
He was buried beneath the sod to which, with the home-sickness of the true Southerner, he had crawled back to die. They laid the pardon in his folded hands.