"And leave your papa and mamma?" "They left their papas and mammas, too," Thaine philosophized. The men laughed, although each felt a curious deep pain at the boy's words. Thaine settled back, satisfied to be silent as he watched the wonderful prairie landscape about him. "I am going down to Shirley's," Carey began, as if to change the subject. "Strange fellow, Jim; I never knew another like him." "I was just thinking of Shirley," Asher responded. "He is a royal neighbor and true friend, better to everybody else than he is to himself. His own crops suffer sometimes while he helps other folks lay theirs by. And yet his premises always look like he was expecting company. One cannot help wondering what purpose stays him in his work." "There is the tragedy of it," Horace Carey declared. "I never knew a more affectionate man, yet he has lived a bachelor all these years." "How long have you known him, Carey?" Asher asked. "Since the night at Kelley's Ferry, back in the Civil War. Our regiment, the Fifty-fourth Virginia, was taken. We were worn out with fighting and marching, and we were nearly starved besides. The Third Ohio boys had been in the same fix once and our boys--" "Yes, I was a Third Ohio boy. I know what you fellows did. You saved our lives," Asher broke in. "Well, you paid us back at Kelley's Ferry. I first knew Jim Shirley that night, although he remembered me from the time we had your regiment at our mercy. He brought me bacon and hard tack and coffee. We have been friends ever since. How long have you known him?" "I am going to war when I get big, before I ever go to the purple notches. I know I am." Thaine had been listening intently and now he broke in with face aglow and eyes full of eagerness. "God forbid!" Carey said. "The lure of the drum beat might be hard for older men to resist even now." "Your hand will fit a plow handle better than a gun-stock, Thaine," his father assured him, looking down at the boy's square, sun-browned hand with a dimple in each knuckle. Thaine shut his lips tightly and said no more. But his father, who knew the heart of a boy, wondered what thoughts might lie back of that silence. "I have known Jim all my life," Asher Aydelot took up the conversation where Thaine had interrupted it. "That is why I have wondered at the tenacity of his holding on out here. A man of his temperament is prone to let go quickly. Besides, Jim is far from being a strong man physically." "When he was down with pneumonia in the early seventies he was ready to give up. Didn't want to get well and was bound not to do it," Dr. Carey said, "but somehow a letter I had brought him seemed to change him with one reading. 'I will do anything to get back to strength and work,' he declared, and he has worked ever since like a man who knew his business, even if his business judgment is sometimes faulty." They rode awhile in silence, drinking in the delicious air of early autumn. Presently Dr. Carey said: