Molly was silent.
"Quit yo' foolin', gal; quit yo' foolin'."
In a moment Bob was by her side, and with his arm around her; and Molly rose to her feet with an ineffectual effort to unclasp his hands.
Bob's strong arms began to tighten, and the girl in a moment turned and gave way into his arms, and with her head on his shoulder, began to cry. But Bob knew what sort of tears they were, and he was as gentle as though his skin had been as white as was his heart.
And Crittenden was coming home—Colour-Sergeant Crittenden, who had got out of the hospital and back to the trenches just in time to receive flag and chevrons on the very day of the surrender—only to fall ill of the fever and go back to the hospital that same day. There was Tampa once more—the great hotel, the streets, silent and deserted, except for the occasional officer that rode or marched through the deep dust of the town, and the other soldiers, regulars and volunteers, who had suffered the disappointment, the heat, sickness, and hardship of war with little credit from the nation at large, and no reward, such even as a like fidelity in any path of peace would have brought them.
Half out of his head, weak and feverish, Crittenden climbed into the dusty train and was whirled through the dusty town, out through dry marshes and dusty woods and dusty, cheerless, dead-flowered fields, but with an exhilaration that made his temple throb like a woman's.
Up through the blistered, sandy, piney lowlands; through Chickamauga again, full of volunteers who, too, had suffered and risked all the ills of the war without one thrill of compensation; and on again, until he was once more on the edge of the Bluegrass, with birds singing the sun down; and again the world for him was changed—from nervous exaltation to an air of balm and peace; from grim hills to the rolling sweep of low, brown slopes; from giant-poplar to broad oak and sugar-tree; from log-cabin to homestead of brick and stone. And so, from mountain of Cuba and mountain of his own land, Crittenden once more passed home. It had been green spring for the earth when he left, but autumn in his heart. Now autumn lay over the earth, but in his heart was spring.
As he glanced out of the window, he could see a great crowd about the station. A brass band was standing in front of the station-door—some holiday excursion was on foot, he thought. As he stepped on the platform, a great cheer was raised and a dozen men swept toward him, friends, personal and political, but when they saw him pale, thin, lean-faced, feverish, dull-eyed, the cheers stopped and two powerful fellows took him by the arms and half carried him to the station-door, where were waiting his mother—and little Phyllis.