The last of the party was on the decorated coach, the last ordinary traveler had boarded the single day-coach and the conductor was signaling for the start, when an erect old man, who all during the flurry of departure had been standing silent and alone behind the protecting shadow of the far side of the station, came swiftly across the platform, stepping with a high, noiseless, deerstalker's tread, and, just as the engine bleated its farewell and the wheels began to turn, swung himself on the forward car. At sight of two little crossed flags fluttering almost above his head he lifted his slouch hat in a sort of shamed salute; but he kept his face turned resolutely away from those other old men to the rear of him. He cramped his great length down into a vacant seat in the daycoach, and there he sat, gazing straight ahead at nothing, as the train drew out of the station, bearing him to his two years at hard labor and these one-time comrades of his to their jubilating at the annual reunion. As for the train, it went winding its leisurely and devious way down the branch line toward the Junction, stopping now and then at small country stations. The air that poured in through the open windows was sweet and heavy with Maytime odors of blossoming and blooming. In the tobacco patches the adolescent plants stood up, fresh and velvet-green. Mating red birds darted through every track-side tangle of underbrush and wove threads of living flame back and forth over every sluggish, yellow creek; and sparrowhawks teetered above the clearings, hunting early grasshoppers. Once in a while there was a small cotton-patch. It was warm--almost as warm as a summer day. The two girls fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs and constantly brushed cinders off their starched blouses. Mrs. Mc-Laurin, buttoned in to her rounded throat, sat bolt-upright, the better to keep wrinkles from marring the flawless fit of her regimentals. She suffered like a Christian martyr of old, smiling with a sweet content--as those same Christian martyrs are said to have suffered and smiled. Judge Priest, sitting one seat to the rear of her, with Major Covington alongside him, napped lightly with his head against the hot red plush of the seat-back. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby found the time fitting and the audience receptive to his celebrated and more than familiar story of what on a certain history-making occasion he heard General Breckinridge say to General Buckner, and what General Buckner said to General Breckinridge in reply.