The war ended and John Appleman was free again; but he had a personal acquaintance with a friend of the Confederate Major John Edwards of Missouri, the right-hand man of the daring General Joe Shelby. There were meetings and an exchange of plans and confidences, and the end of it all was, that Appleman rode into Mexico on that famous foray led by Shelby, when the tottering throne of Maximilian was almost given new foundation by the quixotic raiders. The story of that foray is well known, and there is no occasion for repeating it. It need only be said that when Shelby's men rode gayly home again, John Appleman was not in their company. He had met an old friend in the turbulent City of Mexico; had, with due permission, abandoned the ranks of the wild riders, and had fled away to where were supposable peace and quiet. There was something of cowardice in his action now. He had delayed his home-going; he should have been in Michigan shortly after Appomattox, and now he was afraid to face his vigorous wife and make an explanation. In Guaymas, on the western coast, he thought peace might be. So he bestrode a mule, and with his friend traveled laboriously to the shores of the Pacific, and there with this same friend dropped into the lazy but long life of the latitude. If one had no memory one could do many things. Memory clings ever to a man's coat-tails and drags him back to where he was before. There was a tug upon the coat-tails of John Appleman. He was homesick at times. The musky odors of the coast in blooming time often oppressed him. The fragrance of the tropic blossom had never become sweeter in his nostrils than the breath of northern pines. He wanted to go home, but feared to do so. Mrs. Appleman was assuming monumental proportions in his estimation. And so the years went by, and John Appleman, dealing out groceries in Guaymas for such brief hours of the day as people bought things, his partner relieving him half the time, hungered more with each passing year to see southeastern Michigan, and with each passing year became more alarmed over the prospect of facing the partner of his joys and sorrows there. He was an Anglo-Saxon, far away from home, and the racial instinct and the home instinct were very strong upon him.