Among those lining the pathway across the street along which the President’s body was borne, dripping blood as it passed, stood Rhett Bannister and his son. For one moment, as the moonlight fell on the gray face, already stamped with the seal of death, they saw him. His long arms hung loosely at his sides, his eyes were closed, his countenance showed no mark of suffering, save that some one, holding his wounded head, had inadvertently smeared his cheek with blood. They never forgot that sight. They never could forget it. Many and many a time, in the stillness of midnight, in the light and noise of noonday, no matter where or when, the vision of that face they both had known and loved, with its closed eyes and tangled hair, and with the blood-splash on the cheek, came back to them, with its never-ending shock and sorrow. After the President’s body had passed, and the crowd closed in again, and men took second thought and began to realize the horror of the hour, and to rave against the assassin, and those who might have influenced him, and while women, pale-faced and unbonneted, wept and wrung their hands, the soldiers came and cleared the theatre, and drove the people from the street; and thenceforward, until the dead body of the Chief Magistrate had been borne from the humble house where he died, no one without authority was permitted to pass that way. Rhett Bannister and Bob were pushed and crowded back with the rest up into F Street, along which they had been quietly strolling a half-hour earlier, and there, exhausted from the shock of the tragedy, grief-stricken as they had never been before, they sat down on the street curb to rest. And, even as they sat there, men came running by calling out that Secretary of State Seward had been stabbed in his bed, and that every member of the Cabinet had been marked for murder. “Father,” said Bob, when he found his voice to speak, “what does it all mean?” “I don’t know, Robert, except that the most inhuman and uncalled-for crime that ever marred the centuries has been committed this night.” “Father, I can’t go home. While such things as these are still possible I wouldn’t dare go home, there’s more work for us to do yet in the army. I am going back to-morrow morning to join my regiment in Virginia.” “You are right, my son, and I will go back with you.” And they went. CHAPTER XII THE WELCOME HOME