"I left Chicago that night with a great thrill. I was going to fight for a great cause, for Abraham Lincoln's great dream, for the country my father had died for in Mexico, that my grandfather had fought for at Lundy's Lane. I think," he said, "that if I might have gone right down to the fighting, I'd have stood the test. But when I came to Tennessee the regiment had gone stale. We waited, and waited. Every day I lost a little interest. Every day the routine dragged a little harder. I had time to see what opportunities I had left back here in Chicago. I wasn't afraid of the fighting. But the sheer hatred of what I came to call the uselessness of war gnawed at my soul. I kept thinking of the ways in which I might shape my destiny if only I were free. I kept thinking of the thousand roads to wealth, to personal success, that Chicago held for me. One night I took my chance. I slipped past the lines." "Father!" The boy's voice throbbed with pain. His eyes, dilated with horror at the realization of the older man's admission, fixed their gaze accusingly on James Thorold. "You weren't a--a deserter?" He breathed the word fearfully. "I was a bounty-jumper." "Oh!" Peter Thorold's shoulders drooped as if under the force of a vital blow. Vaguely as he knew the term, the boy knew only too well the burden of disgrace that it carried. Once, in school, he had heard an old tutor apply it to some character of history whom he had especially despised. Again, in a home where he had visited, he had heard another old man use the phrase in contempt for some local personage who had attempted to seek public office. Bounty-jumper! Its province expressed to the lad's mind a layer of the inferno beneath the one reserved for the Benedict Arnolds and the Aaron Burrs. Vainly he bugled to his own troops of self-control; but they, too, were deserters in the calamity. He flung his arms across the table, surrendering to his sobs. Almost impassively James Thorold watched him, as if he himself had gone so far back into his thought of the past that he could not bridge the gap to Peter now. With some thought of crossing the chasm he took up his tale of dishonor. Punctuated by the boy's sobs it went on. "I came back to Chicago and drew the money from the bank. I knew I couldn't go back to the practise of law. I changed my name to Thorold and started in business as an army contractor. I made money. The money that's made us rich, the money that's sending me to Forsland"--a bitterness not in his voice before edged his mention of the embassy--"came from that bounty that the provost marshal gave me."