“Oh, Adam!” cried he. Adam stopped, stock-still. He could see Peter Allinson and Newton Towne, and even Ed Green, on Henry’s porch. They were all having ice-cream and cake together. “Well, what?” said he, roughly. “Won’t you shake hands with me?” “No,” said Adam. “Won’t you come in?” “Never.” Still Henry persisted. “Some one might do you harm, Adam.” “Let them!” said Adam. Then Adam walked on alone. Adam walked alone for forty years. Not only on Memorial Day did he don his gray uniform and make the rounds of the village. When the Fosterville Grand Army Post met on Friday evenings in the post room, Adam managed to meet most of the members either going or returning. He and his gray suit became gradually so familiar to the village that no one turned his head or glanced up from book or paper to see him go by. He had from time to time a new suit, and he ordered from somewhere in the South a succession of gray, broad-brimmed military hats. The farther the war sank into the past, the straighter grew old Adam’s back, the prouder his head. Sometimes, early in the forty years, the acquaintances of his childhood, especially the women, remonstrated with him. “The war’s over, Adam,” they would say. “Can’t you forget it?” “Those G. A. R. fellows don’t forget it,” Adam would answer. “They haven’t changed their principles. Why should I change mine?” “But you might make up with Henry.” “That’s nobody’s business but my own.” “But when you were children you were never separated. Make up, Adam.” “When Henry needs me, I’ll help him,” said Adam. “Henry will never need you. Look at all he’s got!” “Well, then, I don’t need him,” declared Adam, as he walked away. He went back to his saddler shop, where he sat all day stitching. He had ample time to think of Henry and the past. “Brought up like twins!” he would say. “Sharing like brothers! Now he has a fine business and a fine house and fine children, and I have nothing. But I have my principles. I ain’t never truckled to him. Some day he’ll need me, you’ll see!” As Adam grew older, it became more and more certain that Henry would never need him for anything. Henry tried again and again to make friends, but Adam would have none of him. He talked more and more to himself as he sat at his work. “Used to help him over the brook and bait his hook for him. Even built corn-cob houses for him to knock down, that much littler he was than me. Stepped out of the race when I found he wanted Annie. He might ask me for _something!_” Adam seemed often to be growing childish. By the year 1875 fifteen of Fosterville’s thirty-five veterans had died. The men who survived the war were, for the most part, not strong men, and weaknesses established in prisons and on long marches asserted themselves. Fifteen times the Fosterville Post paraded to the cemetery and read its committal service and fired its salute. For these parades Adam did not put on his gray uniform.