These words had sounded in my ears on the night before the battle on the Arickaree, and again in the little cove on the low bluff at Fort Sill, the night Jean Pahusca was taunting me through the few minutes he was allowing me to live. That Psalm belonged to the days when I was doing my part toward the price paid out for the prairie homes and safety and peace. But never anybody read for me as Dr. Hemingway read it that evening. With the close of the service came a prayer of thanksgiving for my return. Then for the first time I was self-conscious. What had I done to be so lovingly and reverently welcomed home? I bowed my head in deep humility, and the tears welled up. Oh, I could look death calmly between the eyes as I had watched it creeping toward me on the heated Plains of the Arickaree, and among the cold starved sand dunes of the Cimarron, but to be lauded as a hero here in Springvale--the tears would come. Where were Custer, and Moore, and Forsyth, and Pliley, and Stillwell, and Morton, if such as I be called a hero? Cam Gentry didn't lead the Doxology that night, he chased it clear into the belfry and up into the very top of the steeple; and his closing burst of melody "Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," had, as Bill Mead declared afterwards, a regular "You-couldn't-have-done-it-better-Lord-if-you-had-been-there-yourself" ring to it. Then came the benediction, fervent, holy, gentle, with Dr. Hemingway's white face (crowned now with snowy hair) lifted up toward heaven. After that I never could remember, save that there was a hush, then a clamor, that was followed pretty soon by embraces from the older men and women, pounding thumps from the younger men and handshaking with the girls. And all the while, with a proprietary sense I had found myself near Marjie, whom I kept close beside me now, her brown head just above my shoulder. More than once in the decades since then it has been my fortune to return to Springvale and be met at the railway station and escorted home by the town band. Sometimes for political service, sometimes for civic effort, and once because by physical strength and great daring and quick cool courage I saved three human lives in a terrible wreck; but never any ovation was like that prayer meeting in the Presbyterian Church nearly forty years ago. The days that followed my home-coming were busy ones, for my place in the office had been vacant. Clayton Anderson had devoted himself to the Whately affairs, although nobody but those in the secret knew when Judson gave up proprietorship and went on a clerk's pay again where he belonged. Springvale was kind to Judson, as it has always been to the man who tries honestly to make good in this life's struggle. It is in the Kansas air, this broader charity, this estimation of character, redeemed or redeemable.