The hope that he had dared to entertain on leaving home, that he might be permitted to take his son’s place in the ranks, had now quite vanished. Before him lay only disgrace and death and a stain on his family name in the North for generations. It was the darkest, most desolate hour his life had known. A small squad of soldiers, in command of an officer, approached him, marching up the street through the crisp morning air in brisk time, swinging their arms in unison as they came, and the thought entered his mind that the best thing he could do would be to surrender himself to them. But when he met them he passed without speaking, and they paid no attention to him. A little farther on a crippled veteran with crutches sat on the curb and asked alms as Bannister passed by. And this hater of the Federal blue thrust his hand into his pocket, drew forth a liberal sum, and gave it to the uniformed beggar, without a word. The man was probably a fraud, but what did it matter? It was doubtless a doomed man’s last opportunity to do a charitable deed. So he passed on, up around the Treasury building and along the front of the White House. It was almost daylight now, but the street-lamps had not yet been extinguished, and in the President’s mansion two windows were still brilliantly illuminated. As Bannister reached the corner by the War Department building he turned and looked back at the White House. There lived the man whom he had ridiculed as a buffoon, whom he had denounced as a tyrant, whom he had decried as a malefactor. And the remark made by Captain Yohe the day before at Easton came back into his mind: “No power on earth can save you from the extreme penalty meted out to deserters unless it be Abraham Lincoln himself.” So this man held also in his hands dominion over life and death. At his word, spoken or withheld, he, Rhett Bannister, would live or die. At his word, spoken or withheld, soldiers by the thousands had given and would still give their lives that his counsels and his judgments might prevail. What an awful responsibility! How it must weigh on a man’s soul! How it must sober him and search him, and drive from his heart all forms of avarice and selfishness and hatred and hypocrisy! How could this man Lincoln, by any human possibility, be anything but honest and humble and God-fearing, with such an awful load upon his mind and heart! Involuntarily, as he pondered, Bannister had turned into the park lying between the White House and the War Department and was sauntering leisurely up the path. There was no purpose in it. Doubtless, his thoughts being upon Abraham Lincoln, he was drawn unconsciously toward the physical abiding-place of the man.