Dan shook his head. “I'm out on parole,” he replied, “but as soon as I'm exchanged, I'll fight if Virginia wants me. How about you, Pinetop?” The mountaineer shuffled his feet in the mud and stood solemnly surveying the landscape. “Wall, I don't understand much about this here parole business,” he replied. “It seems to me that a slip of paper with printed words on it that I have to spell out as I go, is a mighty poor way to keep a man from fightin' if he can find a musket. I ain't steddyin' about this parole, but Marse Robert told me to go home to plant my crop, and I am goin' home to plant it.” “It is all over, I think,” said Dan with a quivering lip, as he stared at the ruined meadows. The smart was still fresh, and it was too soon for him to add, with the knowledge that would come to him from years,--“it is better so.” Despite the grim struggle and the wasted strength, despite the impoverished land and the nameless graves that filled it, despite even his own wrecked youth and the hard-fought fields where he had laid it down--despite all these a shadow was lifted from his people and it was worth the price. They passed on, while the black horse pawed the dust, and the rider hurled oaths at their retreating figures. At a little house a few yards down the road they stopped to ask for food, and found a woman weeping at the kitchen table, with three small children clinging to her skirts. Her husband had fallen at Five Forks, she said, the safe was empty, and the children were crying for bread. Then Dan slipped into her hand the silver he had borrowed from the Union soldier, and the two returned penniless to the road. “At least we are men,” he said almost apologetically to Pinetop, and the next instant turned squarely in the mud, for a voice from the other side had called out shrilly:-- “Hi, Marse Dan, whar you gwine now?” “Bless my soul, it's Big Abel,” he exclaimed. Black as a spade and beaming with delight, the negro emerged from the swarm upon the roadside and grasped Dan's outstretched hands. “Whar you gwine dis away, Marse Dan?” he inquired again. “I'm going home, Big Abel,” responded Dan, as they walked on in a row of three. “No, don't shout, you scamp; I'd rather lie down and die upon the roadside than go home like this.” “Well, you ain' much to look at, dat's sho',” replied Big Abel, his face shining like polished ebony, “en I ain' much to look at needer, but dey'll have ter recollect de way we all wuz befo' we runned away; dey'll have ter recollect you in yo' fine shuts en fancy waistcoats, en dey'll have ter recollect me in yo' ole uns. Sakes alive! I kin see dat one er yourn wid de little bit er flow'rs all over hit des es plain es ef 'twuz yestiddy.” “The waistcoats are all gone now,” said Dan gravely, “and so are the shirts. The war is over and you are your own master, Big Abel. You don't belong to me from this time on.” Big Abel shook his head grinning.