As I have said, I never expected to see my big farmer again; but I did. I completed my business; returned the way I came, passed the great farm after dusk, and the next morning was in the city where I first saw him. Looking ahead as I passed along the street I noticed, towering above every form, and moving in the press like a three-horse van among baby carriages, the vast bulk of the captain's father. He turned aside into a marble-cutter's yard, and stood, looking at the memorial monuments which quite filled it until it looked like a cemetery vastly overplanted. I felt disposed to renew our acquaintance, and spoke to him. He offered me his hand, and when I accepted it he stood clinging to mine, standing a little stooped, the eyes bloodshot, the iron mouth pitifully drooped at the corners, the whole man reminding me of a towering cliff shaken by an earthquake, but mighty and imposing still. He held a paper in his free hand, which he examined closely while retaining the handclasp, and in a way I had come to expect of him, he commenced in the midst of his thought and without verbal salutation. "We've buried Jack!" said he. "I'm deeply sorry!" said I. "Well," said he, "maybe it's just as well.... He was ... you know!... But mother takes it hard--hard!... I'm contractin' f'r a tombstun.... He wanted to see me ... at the last.... 'Dad,' says he, jest as he used to when he was ... was a little feller, ... 'I want you to forgive me before I die.... It's a big country where I'm going, ... an' ... you and I may never run into each other--so forgive me! Mother'll find me--wherever I go ... but you, Dad, ... for fear it's our last chance, let's square up now!' ... I ... I ..." He went out among the stones and seemed to be looking the stock over. Presently, he returned and showed me the paper. It was what a printer would call "copy" for an inscription--the name, the dates, the age of Captain John Hawes--severe, laconic. At the bottom were two or three lines scrawled in a heavy, ponderous hand, with the half-inch lead of a lumber pencil. Only one fist could produce that Polyphemus chirography. "_He went out a private_," it read, "_and came back a captain._" And then, as if by afterthought, and in huge capitals, came the line: "_And died a Christian._" "Is that all right?" he asked. "Is the spellin' all right?... I don't care much about this soldier business ... an' the Christian game ... don't interest me ... a little bit, ... but, neighbor, you don't know how that'll please mother! 'Died a Christian!' ... Someway ... mother ... always loved Jack!" At the turning of the street I looked and saw the last scene of the drama--one that will play itself before me from time to time in retrospect for ever. The great, unhewn, mountainous block was still there, standing among his more shapely and polished brother stones, a human monolith, the poor, pitiful paper in his trembling hand. CHAPTER V