Two days more, and his unconditional resignation was forwarded "approved" from regimental headquarters, and a few days later, sadly bidding his comrades adieu, Calvin started homewards. "It was no use trying to make a fight," he said. "Some fellow had been spying around up the country, and had prejudiced the colonel, and he told me he meant to bring up charges for the old matter. I could have stood up against them separately, but not collectively; and I had no war record, no friends, no influence. What was the use? Old Plodder gave me a check for four hundred dollars, payable at the First National in Chicago. I'll go back to railroading. Wish to God I'd never left it for soldiering, anyhow!" And with that he was gone, to await at his home the acceptance of his tendered resignation. Now there was unexpected sympathy for Calvin in the regiment. He was a plain man, of limited education, who had run an engine on one of Tecumseh Sherman's vitally important railways in '64, and when his train was attacked by Hood's horsemen he had fought like a hero, had been made an officer in a regiment doing railway-guard duty, and at the end of the war a lieutenant in the regular infantry. Being sociable, warm-hearted, and weak, he had fallen into drinking ways, had spent his money fast, and so had fallen from grace. He had long been unhappy and out of his element in the service. Perhaps it was best that he should go back to the old life, where drink was an impossibility. But the wonder was, how could old Plodder bear to spend four hundred dollars of his hoarded gains even for the coveted file? _That_ was not answered until long afterwards, and really has no place in the immediate _dénouement_ of this plot. It might come in handily elsewhere. He _had_ given Calvin four hundred dollars to resign at once, and perhaps the colonel breathed freer at having the case decided for him. Now we were all agog for the result. It depended, of course, upon Riggs's sentence.