Griffith lifted the hard, brown, rough hand in both of his and gravely kissed it. "You are the truest friend I ever had, Lengthy. God bless and protect you! Good-bye." The mountaineer laid the great hand on the palm of its fellow, and looked at it gravely as he rode. "Kissed it, by gum!" He gazed at the spot in silent awe. "Few-words-comp-----" His voice broke, and he rode away at the head of the command, still holding the sacred hand on the palm of the one not so consecrated, and looked at it from time to time with silent, reverential admiration. His gun lay across his saddle, and the horse took the ford as one to the manner born. On the farther bank he turned and looked back. Griffith waved his handkerchief, and every man in the command joined in the salute when Lengthy's shout rang out, "Three cheers for the Parson!" Even the General's hat went up, and Griffith rode back alone over the path he had but just come, alone--and unguarded--but with a great load lifted from his shoulders, bound for Washington to make his final report to the President, and then return to the ways and haunts of peace. "Homeward bound! homeward bound! thank God!" he said, aloud, "with life's worst and hardest duty done. Surely, surely, my part of this terrible straggle is over! It has shadowed me for twenty long years. The future shall be free. Peace has come for me at last!" CHAPTER XX. _"The days of youth are the days of gladness."_ "Dear Mother," wrote Howard, "I forgot to write last week, but then there wasn't the first thing to tell, so it don't matter. We're just loafing here in camp waiting for the next move. We had a little scrap with the Johnnies ten days ago, but it didn't come to anything on either side. They are sulking in their tents and we are dittoing in ours. But what I began this letter to tell is really funny, and I don't want to forget to write it. The other day a slabsided old woman (you never did see such a funny looking creature. She was worse than the mountaineer class in Virginia, or even than those Hoosiers out there on that farm near ours.) Well, she came to our camp from some place back in the country and asked to see our 'doctor man.' She seemed to think there was but one. "One of the surgeons had a talk with her, and it turned out that her 'ole man,' as she called her husband, was 'mighty bad off with breakbone fever,' and she had come to see if the Yankee doctor man wouldn't have some kind of stuff that would cure him the first dose. These kinds of folks think our officers and doctors are about omnipotent, because our men are so much better fed and clothed and equipped than the Johnnies are.