But he was in the ranks because of disgrace--hiding away from his own people, keeping aloof from his proper station in life, out of bitter shame.

If he had felt thus before, he now felt it a thousand times more acutely in memory of the comradeship of her whose words had brought him a new gleam of hope.
Never before had loneliness seemed so complete, and never before had he realized how wide was the chasm between the old and the new life.

This constantly recurrent memory embittered him, and made him restless.

Yet out of it all, there grew a firmer determination to win back his old position in the world, to stamp out the lie through which that Confederate court-martial had condemned him.

If Le Fevre were alive, he meant now to find him, face him, and compel him to speak the truth.
The discovery of that haversack gave a point from which to start, and his mind centred there with a fixed purpose which obscured all else.
It was after dark when "M" troop, wearied by their long day's march across the brown grass, rode slowly up the face of the bluff, and into the parade ground at Fort Dodge.