"We felt it so at the time, at least very many of us did, and looking back, we can see how big a thing it was. We fought the good fight, we crushed something evil, that would have destroyed our country. Every man in our army has a right to be proud of it, proud of himself, if he did his best ... he has a right to be remembered...."
"Yes, surely," said Judge Baxter, with the same grave intentness, his keen eyes watching Carlin's every look and motion.
There was a brief silence.
"Well," said Carlin, drawing a deep breath. "Barclay was forgotten.... The last year, letters were scarce. We were on the jump and then we went down into Georgia.... I don't know just what happened here. He doesn't make any accusation against his wife, though it seems there was somebody else she liked. But she'd settled her life without him. She could support the family and she'd got used to doing without him. Perhaps she never cared so much for him as he thought. But yet if he'd been here, probably it would have gone along all right. But he wasn't, you see.... And she heard things about him too. He was in the guardhouse a few times for drinking, and somebody else would mention it in writing home.... All that came out after he got back."
Carlin was still walking about restlessly under the Judge's watchful gaze.
"When he got back he found he wasn't wanted—that's all. His wife could do without him, and preferred to. His children were little—they'd forgotten him. There was a baby he'd never seen. He felt like a stranger in the house. And she made him feel it! At first he couldn't realize it, and tried to have it all as it was before—but it was no use. She didn't want him there.... Well, I suppose you can't see what that meant to him—"
"Yes, I can," said the Judge.
"It was all he had, you know. And she'd taken it away from him—the children and all. He could see that if he'd never come back, if he'd been killed, she would have married this other man, and never missed him. He saw that she wished he hadn't come back. In fact—she told him so, after they got to quarrelling...."
"That was pretty bad," muttered the Judge.
"And he still loved her, you see. Otherwise he'd have gone away again. But he wanted her and the children. So he took to drinking—"