Rhett Bannister and Bob were pushed and crowded back with the rest up into F Street, along which they had been quietly strolling a half-hour earlier, and there, exhausted from the shock of the tragedy, grief-stricken as they had never been before, they sat down on the street curb to rest. And, even as they sat there, men came running by calling out that Secretary of State Seward had been stabbed in his bed, and that every member of the Cabinet had been marked for murder.
“Father,” said Bob, when he found his voice to speak, “what does it all mean?”
“I don’t know, Robert, except that the most inhuman and uncalled-for crime that ever marred the centuries has been committed this night.”
“Father, I can’t go home. While such things as these are still possible I wouldn’t dare go home, there’s more work for us to do yet in the army. I am going back to-morrow morning to join my regiment in Virginia.”
“You are right, my son, and I will go back with you.”
And they went.
[CHAPTER XII]
THE WELCOME HOME
The war was over. Peace rested on the land. All men, North and South, were thankful that the shedding of human blood had ceased. June came, brighter, more beautiful, than any other June of which living men had memory. The world was filled with sunshine, with flowers, with the songs of birds, with the flashings of waters, with the gladness of nature and humanity. The last tired, tattered soldier of the South had gone back to his home to pick up the broken threads of destiny and to begin his life anew. And, slowly drifting up from camp and battle-field, the veterans of the Union army were coming by ones and twos and in little groups, some of them mere ghosts of the boys who had gone to the front when the war was on. But for every war-worn soldier thus returning there was one who would never come again. So there were tears as well as smiles, and heart-aches as well as rejoicings.