"O Tobe!" groaned the captain, "I wish you had given them up. I would have lost everything rather than have had this."
"Mass Cap'n."
"Yes, Tobe, what is it?"
"De little chillens, Mass Cap'n; I meaned ter wait on 'em right smart. Tell 'em"—His voice grew fainter, and his eyes closed.
"Yes, my boy: what shall I tell them?"
"Tell 'em I didn't lose de boots; I kep 'em de bes'—I knowed."
There was a faint sigh, a flutter of the eyelids, and the little life that had been so truly "de bes' he knowed" (ah! if we could all say that!) was ended.
Very reverently Captain Leigh lifted the boots, all wet and stained with blood. "I will never wear those boots again," he said; "but I will never part with them. They shall be Tobe's monument."
In the hall of Captain Leigh's house is a deep niche, and in it, on a marble slab covered with a glass case, stands a pair of cavalry boots with dark stains upon them, and on the edge of the slab, in golden letters, is the inscription:
"In memory of Tobe,
Faithful unto death."