"Old lady," cried Henniker the Coxeyite, "have you been stuffing that boy about his dad as you did the mother about hers?" "I have told him the truth, partly. The rest, if it wasn't the truth, it ought to have been," answered Mrs. Meadows stoutly. "I have put the story right, as an honest man would have lived it. Whatever you've been doing with yourself these years, it's your own affair, not the boy's nor mine. Keep it to yourself now. You were too good for them once,--the mother and the child; they can do without you now." "That's all right," said Henniker, wincing; "but as a matter of curiosity let me hear how you have put it up." "How I have what?" "How you have dressed up the story to the boy. I'd like to see myself with a woman's eyes once more." Mrs. Meadows looked him over and hesitated; then her face kindled. "I've told him that his father was a beautiful clean man," she said, using unconsciously the boy's own words, "and rode a beautiful horse, and saluted his captain so!" She pointed to the corporal of the guard who was at that moment reporting. "I told him that when the troops went you had to leave your young wife behind you, and she could not be kept from following you with her child; and by a cruel mischance you passed each other on the road, and you never knew till you had got to her old home and heard she was dead and buried; and you were so broke up that you couldn't bear your life in the place where you used to be with her; and you were a sorrowful wandering man that he must pray for, and ask God to bring you home. You never came near us, Henniker, nor thought of coming; but could I tell your own child that? Indeed, I would be afraid to tell him what did happen on that road from Custer station, for fear when he's a man he'd go hunting you with a shotgun. Now where is the falsehood here? Is it in me, or in you, who have made it as much as your own life is worth to tell the truth about you to your son? _Was_ it the truth, Henniker? Sure, man, you did love her! What did you want with her else? Was it the truth that they told us at Custer? There are times when I can't believe it myself. If there is a word you could say for yourself,--say it, for the child's sake! You wouldn't mind speaking to an old woman like me? There was a time when I would have been proud to call you my son." "You are a good woman, Mrs. Meadows, but I cannot lie to you, even for the child's sake. And it's not that I don't know how to lie, for God knows I'm nothing but a lie this blessed minute! What do I care for such cattle as these?" He had risen, and waved his hand contemptuously toward his fellow-martyrs. "Well, I must be going. I see they're passin' around the flesh-pots. We're livin' like fighting-cocks here, on a restaurant contract. There'll be a big deal in it for the marshal, I suspect." Henniker winked, and his face fell into the lowest of its demoralized expressions.