"I must bid yer good-bye, Dougl's," he said at last. "I've a long tramp afore me to-night. Mebbe worse. Mayhap I may n't see you agin; men can't hev a grip on the next hour, these days. I'm glad we 're friends. Whatever comes afore mornin', I'm glad o' that!"
"Have you no more to say to me?"
"Yes, Dougl's,—'s for my little girl,—ef so be as I should foller my boy sometime, I'd wish you'd be friends to Dode, Dougl's. Yes! I would,"—hesitating, something wet oozing from his small black eye, and losing itself in the snuffy wrinkles.
Palmer was touched. It was a hard struggle with pain that had wrung out that tear. The old man held his hand a minute, then turned to the road.
"Whichever of us sees Geordy first kin tell him t' other's livin' a true-grit honest life, call him Yankee or Virginian,—an' that's enough said! So good bye, Dougl's!"
Palmer mounted his horse and galloped off to the camp, the old man plodding steadily down the road. When the echo of the horse's hoofs had ceased, a lean gangling figure came from out of the field-brush, and met him.
"Why, David boy! whar were ye to-night?" Scofield's voice had grown strangely tender in the last hour.
Gaunt hesitated. He had not the moral courage to tell the old man he had enlisted.
"I waited. I must air the church,—it is polluted with foul smells."
Scofield laughed to himself at David's "whimsey," but he halted, going with the young man as he strode across the field. He had a dull foreboding of the end of the night's battle: before he went to it, he clung with a womanish affection to anything belonging to his home, as this Gaunt did. He had not thought the poor young man was so dear to him, until now, as he jogged along beside him, thinking that before morning he might be lying dead at the Gap. How many people would care? David would, and Dode, and old Bone.