# Sunday Magazine/General and Moonshiner

Extracted from Sunday Magazine, (Washington Star) 19 Jan 1913; pp. 3–4, 13, 14. Accompanying illustration by Armand Both may be omitted.
GENERAL AND MOONSHINER
Drawing by Armand Both By ROY NORTON
He Withered Him with His Fierce Torrent of Denunciation.
THERE was nothing whatever about the General that was mysterious, and if anyone suffered from curiosity he would enlighten him—in his good time; for he was not a man to be forced into anything. Yet, to the simple dwellers of the high hills up there on the cone of New Jersey, he was a figure of incomprehensibility. There was nothing about the moonshiner that was not as open as a book, apparently: yet he dwelt in that lovely wilderness for many years, preserving all his secrets under that assumption of frankness. The General came and went all within a year, and passed from the lives of those who had come to know and admire him. And any scholar of history or biography could know all about him. The moonshiner, who was so frank and open, lived there for twenty years; yet not a dozen knew whence he came, or whither he fared.
So, inasmuch as most of this story is true, and in Berlin you can learn all about the General, and down in the Treasury archives at Washington the wise explorer may learn much about the moonshiner, anti as both have stepped across the ultimate border, it is fitting that this tale should l»e added to the record. There are some wise old men, living up there in that beautiful wilderness that still exists, where lakes lie like jewels set in gorgeous greens, who may perchance read these lines as they nod and doze beside their firesides, and will draw conclusions, and smile; but of this be sure, the names of the General and the moonshiner are not true.
The Franco-Prussian War was still fresh in the minds of the world when the General arrived. He stormed and fumed somewhat because the stage that was to convey him and his belongings and his servants from the railway up to the quaint old tavern that still dwells serenely by the shore of the lake, was late. It came at last, and was driven, recklessly rattling, by a young German who flushed to the roots of his blond hair until the tan of his face was accentuated. He came to a halt there by the little, bewhittled, weather-stained station, jerked his fat horses to a standstill, heaved himself into the road, squared his shoulders, and stood at a fine salute.
The General smiled at him grimly, in a way he had, the smile seeming to have nothing whatever to do with his face and coming solely from the steady gray eyes. He acknowledged the salute stiffly, and gave a twitch as if the slight movement of his arm caused him pain.
"You are from the Fatherland?" he asked in his good, wholesome Prussian.
"From Sachsen-Meiningen, Herr General."
"Umph!" grunted the General, and then shouted to his followers, who were regarded by the driver with much interest.
Were there ever such servants? Soldiers they were,—soldiers all, some of them with scars, one or two with Schläger cuts crisscrossing their faces, and one, evidently the most confidential servant, with not only numerous scars and marks of the corps brave, but with snow-white hair. They laid hands upon the General and hoisted him into the stage, grunting a little under this effort, passed canes and crutches in after him. ran madly to and fro to collect his baggage, and acted in all ways as if it were a duty bestowed by right upon a great hero. The driver's astonishment was increased when, as the last piece of baggage was bestowed, they saluted and stood at attention in the road.
"Drive on!" ordered the General. And then, "Halt!"
The fat horses, which had drowsily leaned into their collars, required no second invitation to resume somnolence.
"Wolsbach," grunted the General, "you too can ride. Mount!"
Wolsbach, the white-haired, scarred man, "mounted," and the wagon started with' the five other men dutifully trudging behind, when trudging was possible, then trotting at the double when the fat horses trotted down a hill to avoid putting any weight to the breeching. As they turned in toward the tavern, nestling, as it now nestles, beneath the great trees, this strange convoy of servants walked faster, as if to pass the stage and be on hand to receive so distinguished and grumpy a man as the Herr General Friedrich von Bentz. The few loungers on the veranda were highly amused by the three stiff-legged, spatting, goose steps, and the stiff -armed salute of this advance squad as it passed the creaking and ancient vehicle. Still further were they interested by that quick, machinelike formation into line and salute as the stage stopped before the low and hospitable veranda, hanging over and sheltering the wide, low, and hospitable doors.
His men hoisted the General out. The hand of some nervous one slipped, the General was lowered rather roughly, and those who understood German fled with fingers to their ears. He fired volleys, salvos, broadsides, of expletives as if engaged in a battle where it had become necessary to rally or drive his troops. They assisted him inside, and to a chair in the taproom. A sign, speckled and faded, announced that here might be found cool bottles of an ancient and famous Munchener brew, and the General's face lighted, wreathed itself into lines of satisfaction, and he forgot further to admonish any of his staff for delinquency. The General spoke. Wolsbach jumped; likewise he obeyed a command. The General paused after a moment's ecstasy, and held high a thick glass as if enraptured by the foam. He smacked his lips. His retainers watched him attentively and enviously. He smacked his lips again. His men, still panting and perspiring from their road work, choked, and some of them thrust dry tongues lx- tween dry lips and threatened tears. The General drained the remainder of that Munchener Brau and scowled officially at the landlord.
"You are from Bayern?" he growled as if accusing the host.
"Yes. From Munchen, Herr General."
"Ach, Gott! Now I feel at home!" asserted the General, and without calling for any assistance reached for his crutches, permitted Wolsbach to lift him to his feet, and away to his rooms. Until his back was turned his retainers stood at salute; then they broke over one another to test the truth of the faded sign.
And so came the General to the tavern by the lake.
A DISTINGUISHED man was he. It leaked out little by little from those grim veterans who guarded him, those men who had faced, stolidly, the ripping, valiant French guns, and harried the borders of Paris itself in the end. Distinguished? Had he not, suffering from his wounds, been sent by the good old "Unser Fritz" himself, together with this guard, picked chosen men, to seek strange lands and recuperate? Had not two other grim old veterans. Bismarck and Yon Moltke, in person, gravely saluted him goodby and Auf Wiedersehen as the big ship sailed away' from Hamburg's busy wharf? Was it possible that there lived one so stupid as this host of the tavern, who had not heard of all this? Of the cavalry charge at Sedan? "Donnerwetter! Was ein Esel-Schafskopf!"
It became known also that the veteran General, suffering from old wounds, was to travel in this new land, to observe, and to learn its people, and that his stay on the lake, while unlimited, or to be as he desired, would probably be no more than a month. But, mark you,—and this always with an air of challenge,—the Herr General could go or come as he wished, or tarry as long as he liked. A hero knows no chains. His leave was indefinite. And always this was announced that no one might suspect for an instant that so great a man need fear any rules or conventions.
Being a man of regularity and orderliness and routine, the General arranged his household. Wolsbaqh was his personal attendant, refusing to permit a common hired valet to bring the hot water, to shave the hero, to assist him down the creaking oak stairs, and religiously he stood behind the chair when the General gobbled his food. One must regret to write that of such a fine old man; but certain truths must be observed lest those wise old men by the fireplaces enter denial. The General gobbled his breakfast invariably, as if there were but three minutes between him and a battle. The gobbling began at exactly six-forty-seven o'clock a. m. At exactly seven o'clock a. m., and entirely heedless of those who might be watching in this foreign land, six men, soldierly and earnest, stood at parade on the ground in front of the piazza. At exactly that minute there would appear on the steps a white-haired, stem-faced old man, who would lay his crutches on a chair, cling to a post, and shout in his native tongue, "The report, please!" Briskly the white-haired veteran Wolsbach would announce that all was well; that the past orders had been executed; that the health of the company continued excellent; after which he stood at salute.
"Then the day's orders will bc that all save the Sergeant Wolsbach shall go fishing." The General would issue his orders for the day, with that lurking, humorous smile in his eyes, and Wolsbach, perfectly serious and soldierly, would take two brisk steps forward, two to the right, 'bout face, and repeat the order in a loud voice; then, 'bout face, two steps to the left, two steps to the rear, and salute, from parade head. Always they shouted:
"Long live the Kaiser, the Fatherland, and the Herr General Friedrich von Bentz!" The last with a hoarse yell, and then parade was dismissed.
It never varied from that formula, save when winter came, and then the men were ordered to skate, to coast, to walk ten miles, or whatever other occupation the whimsical mind of the General might invent. It never varied in time. Clocks might have been set by it, had there been any wandering or irresponsible clocks in the hills in those early '70's. Discipline!
Also it came to be known that the General had not desired so large a following; but that it had been forced upon him by the redoubtable man of iron, who believed in impressing a nice little country' like the United States of America by so imposing a show of men. At seven-fifteen the General could be found at ease. Wolsbach lovingly, nay reverently, filled a huge meerschaum pipe, whose cords were of Prussian colors in silk, whose fine plate of gold named its donors, whose stem of cherry was in joints, and sometimes the General's mind wavered as to just the number of joints he wished in that stem. Then it would be, "One more, Wolsbach," or "Himmel! Was ist los? One less stem, Wolsbach!" After which he would puff leisurely, while smoke curled like incense from that huge bowl, fragrant, soothing, obscuring.
And so began the recuperation of General Fritz.
THERE is an island in that lake, lifting its center like a spearhead from the heart of a great buckler of green, and from its shores may be seen the vast and noble range of hills, swarming topsyturvy round the lake. Splendid trees guard it as if they loved it, changing costume with the season, ranging their fashions from the tender green of spring to the brilliant reds of autumn and the staid, unfurbelowed thinness of winter. And on this island, unattended by servant, dwelt old Henry Roth, as he was known to all, even as well as was the island known as Roths Island. The island has outlast#! them all,—from the Delaware Indians who once camped upon it, to the grim veteran, and the frank old German. A clubhouse defames it now, where in summer nights one may hear the sounds of violins, and the laughter of young voices, and catch through the rays of the moon young maidens and young men in yachting suits or immaculate evening garb.
All the countryside knew Heinrich Roth, the lovable and courteous old magnate who had been there before and since the American War of Secession. And why not? Was he not the most prosperous man in all the mountains? Was he not the owner of the sugar mill, that stone building down in the gorge, to which came canalboats laden with cane, sweet smelling, and fragrant with the odors of that distant southland? What journeys were suggested by that unfamiliar perfume! What long travels lay between the brakes, the hands of black men, and this Northern spot of enterprise! When the old post tavern had been converted into a mill, after the highway had shifted, and the ancient road over which Washington had dragged hi> guns had overgrown, men smiled at what they called "Dutch stupidity."
But Roth had prospered. He had bought lands all around, and openly announced that some day he hoped to own every foot that bordered the lake that twisted itself for so many miles back into the feet of the hills. Canalboats crept slowly up through the locks from the tidewater of the New York harbor and discharged the cane. Some of them returned laden with new barrels on which the stamp neatly asserted that within might be found the best cane sugar ever produced. The markets were open for its brown, crystalline purity, and ever the purse of Herr Roth opened to receive the returns, and to swell, and grow stout; but never arrogant.
THE General had not been at the tavern a week when, from his island, a mile out in the lake, came Herr Roth, one of his numerous men rowing the boat and bringing it smartly to the log landing pier that stretched out into the quiet waters from the tavern shore. The stout German magnate of lands and sugar mills walked sturdily up the beach, into the taproom, and confronted General Friedrich, who was contentedly finishing the last of a pipe and the last of his forenoon stein. Unlike the few other Germans who had come all the way from New York to talk with the distinguished veteran, Herr Roth displayed no trepidation. Instead he took from his pocket a cardcase, withdrew a card, resented it, and stood waiting. For the first time since is arrival the General got as quickly to his feet as his condition would permit and saluted. He started to speak; but old Heinrich Roth held up a delicately restraining hand, and those in the taproom, the proprietor and the cellar man, observed in his motion a new and polished grace.
"My name is Herr Roth," said the visitor, and the General again saluted and his eyes twinkled.
"Herr Roth," he repeated, and the cellar man scratched his head, tugged at his leather apron, and went out nonplussed, at the same time that the host caught himself staring open mouthed, and, to amend his seeming curiosity, closed his mouth, looked at his queer array of queer bottles, and merely wondered what could have been on the card.
The General and his fellow countryman wandered out to the porch, with Wolsbach's aid, and talked interestedly for a long time. Then the sugar mill owner went back to his boat and rowed away. On the next day the Herr General repaid the visit. And that was the first of many; for it began to be customary for the veteran to have himself rowed across to the island on mild evenings, and his men had this new task to employ their late hours. Discipline, so far as evening duties and taps were concerned, went to the dogs, because the General sometimes kept late hours, excitedly playing penuchle or chess until one or two o'clock in the morning. But one thing in all this relaxation was certain, that he would lie sure to return in time for the morning parade. That, at least, never failed. His stay extended beyond the month. Wolsbach confided to his fellows, in "Barracks," as they called their rooms, that it was because the chess and penuchle games were tied, and that neither Herr Roth nor the General might declare himself the victor; that these two queer old men would sit and play silently at the chessboard for hours, or bang their poor, suffering, unoffending knuckles on the table at penuchle, and then sit and almost quarrel over the points of the game they had played.
"You melded one hundred and fifty, then led from the jack—paugh!" Or, "It was such a foolishness to advance queen to knight's second, when by castling you could have won the game!" and so on, until they would forget this desperate warfare and salute each other good-night. The General frequently asked his advice, Wolsbach asserted, swelling his ponderous chest and giving an extra upward twist to his mustaches, and then sometimes that faithful little corps of veterans would shriek with laughter and shout, "Asking his advice—his! Ha-ha-ha!" And Wolsbach would lose his temper and offer to fight one or all of them. "We have swords!" he would declare heatedly. "What, am I, Johann Wolsbach, Sergeant of his Majesty's First Uhlans, who have participated in a thousand battles, to Ik* laughed at by such as thou? No! Zehn Tausend Teufel! No!"
After which, satisfied, they would calm him adroitly, and with none but kindly intent; for quite well they knew his valor.
In due course, as month after month slipped away into time's archives, the General so far regained his health as to be able to hobble around without crutches; using, instead, Wolsbach and a cane. In a few months more he discarded Wolsbach as a staff, and then the cane also was left behind as he trudged over the neighboring mountain paths. His arm seemed no better, and was still quite helpless and painful when he made a trip to Washington.
EVERYONE in the hills, who had come to know and like this old warrior, was astonished, amazed, stupefied, by the news that came through the newspapers. There was no disputing it! The President of the United States had received and entertained General Friedrich as a distinguished guest! The official representative of the Fatherland had conducted the meeting, with all his diplomatic staff respectfully bringing up the rear. The veteran appeared in a gorgeous uniform, resplendent with medals in such imposing numbers that it required the full breadth of his great chest, the points of his huge, square shoulders, and the upper part of his portly abdomen to display them all. Wolsbach and the guard also were on hand in splendid uniforms, and there was not a man of them that did not have medals of his own, particularly Wolsbach. The illustrated weeklies had pictures of them; so it could not lie denied. There were stories of entertainment in Washington, pictures of the President shaking hands with the General, pictures of the New York and Hoboken turnvereins and schützencorps with gay uniforms giving him and his men a banquet in New York, and all sorts of interesting events.
And then, after it was all over, the General returned to the lake one placid spring evening, as unpretentious as ever, with his men appearing just as modest in civilian's garb, and Wolsbach grumbling and twisting his gray mustache, just as on the day they had departed.
The General was so glad to get back to the tavern that he shook hands with everybody, from the proprietor down to the cellar man, and even condescended to chuck the table maid under the chin. The honors done him seemed in no wise to have changed him. He laughed and chuckled as of old, smoked his prodigious pipe with the same gusto, and on the very first night hurried across to the island to visit his crony, Herr Roth.
"You had seven hundred and eleven games," he roared immediately after his greeting, "and I had seven hundred and twelve."
"But in the last you had luck, not skill. You melded a hundred aces," was the hot retort, and so at it they went again.
They did not pause to discuss the notable visit to Washington, and the Herr General slyly forgot to mention that he had notified the German War Office that he was improved, but believed it best that he remain for some indefinite further time to get the use of his right arm, which, perhaps, the War Office remembered, had been shattered by three balls in the charge in front of the stone church at Mars-la-Tour. The arm appeared to work fairly well now—at penuchle! Otherwise it was painful.
IT was well enough to shake a fist one night over a disputed point, and, because the General was a trifle out of sorts, the game ended early, and in a huff the veteran and Wolsbach took their departure. The stars and the moon were behind clouds that scurried across the sky in a little summer thunder shower, for all the world like tantalizing shutters, permitting the moon to break through and shine now and then, only to shut the world into blacker darkness after each interval. The lake was as still and unruffled as ever lake may be.
"Donnerwetter, Wolsbach! That Herr Roth is a great crank!" asserted the General, as he dropped comfortably into the boat. "He makes me angry. Row me around a little so I can cool off."
And Wolsbach, wordless, obeyed. They headed down toward the point that thrust its wooded tongue out into the waters, and then back across toward the rear of the island. Wolsbach was almost drifting when they heard a noise, and he paused to listen.
"P-s-s-s-s-st!" said the General. "What was that?"
They held their breathing, better to listen. There was a soft splashing in the water, repeated at intervals, and approaching. The moon came out just in time to disclose a huge, bargelike boat, manfully oared by four men of the night, who looked like phantoms of blackness with brawny, bare arms, sweeping down toward them. Silently this barge passed them. Quickly the moon was again veiled, and the mysterious travelers of the night, on the unfrequented lake, were lost to sight.
Wolsbach and the General turned homeward, wondering a trifle over this strange encounter, then dismissing it from mind.
THE day's orders are," said the General at parade the next morning, with his dry twinkle, "that the troops shall march to the sugar mill below the lake and shall there study the process of making cane sugar, after which they shall return to their quarters and have liberty for the remainder of the day. Parade is dismissed!"
Led by Wolsbach, the "troops" trudged away to the mill owned by Heinrich Roth, taking the four-mile tramp with military precision. It was interesting to report to the good old Prussian, who laughed at their arrival and told them to help themselves. The sweet odor of the cane lx*ing unloaded from the canalboats that drew up into the reach of the little pond back of the mill door, the rumble of the mill as it ground out its thick brown succulence, the conversation with some of the workmen, men of their own tongue, the strange, bared strength of the negroes, all made this day's orders a pleasant excursion. They laughed uproariously at little incidents, like boys out for a lark and easily amused.
They almost doubled over when, in loading a boat with the big hogsheads bearing the stencil telling that its contents were "New Orleans Number One," or "Number Two," one of the awkward receptacles broke loose from its sling, smashed downward, struck a stone post, and burst its stakes. A barrel popped out, bright and new, and lay on the wharf. A barrel within a hogshead seemed amusing. The negroes scowled at them, and they chaffed the dusky men in their own tongue, until they had rolled the barrel back out of sight in the dim recesses of the sugar storehouse. Then they were truculent when one of the negroes, a huge man from Martinique, asked them if they spoke French, and on being assured that they did promptly told them to get away from that loading pier and mind their own business. Herr Roth came fussing up, perturbed, in time to apologize for his man, and led them away to display other curious parts of the old plant.
They skylarked homeward until in sight of the tavern, when they came stiffly to order and sedately marched to their quarters, where they were punctiliously dismissed for the day; but the memory lingered, and General Friedrich smiled when, apparently asleep on the veranda, he overheard them laughing over the barrel incidents.
"My children are happy," he said with a sigh; "but some day soon we must leave it all. Just a few months more!"
The parting was nearer than he predicted.
IT was on a lowering threatening night in early summer, that the spirit of youth, the spirit of the corps student, the joyish spirit of prankishness, invaded the General as, rowed by the faithful Wolsbach, he crossed the lake to play the thousandth game. It impelled him to play a joke. He startled the Sergeant by laughing aloud at its inception.
"Tonight, Wolsbach," he said, "as it is so dark that a man couldn't see his sword six inches from his nose, we will have some fun with Heinrich. Row you round to the other side of the island, and we will enter unannounced and softly through the rear door. We shall surprise the old rascal at his Schnaps! Ha-ha! He will jump into the air in astonishment when we enter like ghosts from Valhalla!"
Wolsbach, smiling in the darkness, directed the boat carefully and quietly away from the little landing pier, skirted the densely wooded island, and laboriously rowed until he was on its farthest side. He had never been there before. Ho was not certain that there was a place to land, for his observations from a distance led him to know that on that side jagged rocks thrust sharp noses upward like monsters rising from the depths; but the water was still, and therefore there was no fear of the surf. Straight in between the jaws of a reef he blundered, with fool's luck, and grounded the boat on a strip of sand. Together these old campaigners, accustomed to silent forays, slipped up and into the black, heavy woods, with the General, softly chuckling, in the lead. Then, abruptly, Wolsbach almost stumbled against him; for he had stopped and held back through the darkness a restraining hand.
"Humph! What is this?" he heard the General mutter, and, staring round him to discover the cause of the halt, saw thin, wavering bars of light through the forest in front.
The General cautioned him to silence, and they slipped forward again, more cautiously than ever, and curious as to what was ahead. Suddenly they came to a barricade, higher than their reach, stretching up into the blackness of the trees. The lights they had seen filtered through the cracks, and, side by side, they peered through one of these. It was as if what they saw held them spellbound and speechless.
INSIDE what seemed to be a considerable inclosure of planks, a sort of screen, they saw men working about monstrous shapes. The men were all negroes, of that black, enormous, muscular type from the far Caribbean seas,—men of the type who had been pirates and warriors and poets. Stripped to the waist they were, and barefooted and bareheaded. They strove like devils, feeding the fires under the monstrous shapes, and the light of springing, angry flames revealed the perspiration dripping and glistening across their ebony skins and huge, obedient muscles.
They worked noiselessly and persistently, carrying logs and branches with which they constantly fed the fires. And the flames sjvirleri and glowed round huge kettles, catching dull red reflections from their rounded copper bellies, wafting outward now and then to expose a stray wisp of steam that curled angrily upward and dissipated itself in the branches of the brooding trees that appeared to hang low over the night work, as if participants in brewing some evil draft. A strong fragrance of cane crept outward now and then, a fragrance that seemed a fitting atmosphere for these black men from the mysterious, evil tropics. Sometimes the flames, sweeping outward, brought into relief the arms of the stills which appeared to writhe and quaver in the shifting light, as they bent their curved necks downward to barrel and cask to seek the condensing agent of cold water pumped from the placid lake that lay behind, still and innocent, under the shielding night sky.
Wolsbach, peering wide-eyed through the crack, felt steady, harsh fingers laid on his arm. Obediently he followed their direction, as the General turned and hastened less carefully away from the barricade, out around it, and into a path that their feet struck, which both knew must lead to the rear door of Heinrich Roth's home. Wolsbach heard the General's hand fumbling for the doorknob, heard it turn, heard the door open, and followed in. A light shone from beneath a crack at the end of the passage-way,—the dim light that came from the shaded lamp in that hospitable room where on so many nights the toy game of war and the jocular turn of the cards had entertained them.
"Halt!" commanded the General. "Stand you here, and wait!"
HE pulled the door open abruptly, even as he spoke, stepped inside, closed it, and stood with his back against it, harshly scowling at the old Prussian, who, startled, indignant, had half risen to face him. The chessmen were on the table laid for the game, the penuchle deck scattered across the cloth beside it. From the edge of the lampshade, low over the table, Herr Roth looked at him, his face depicting bewilderment and confused emotions. The unceremonious entrance in itself would have meant nothing to one fortified by innocence; but the stern, grim, accusing face spoke tragedies. For a long time they remained thus, each reading the other and understanding, the accuser and the accused, soundless. The very room that had resounded to their shouts, exultations, altercations, and mirth partook of this stillness, as if waiting for the General to speak and end it all, to write Finis to the Book of Friendship.
His arm, the one honorably crippled at Sedan, came painfully up. The fingers of his hand that had never trembled before an enemy shook as if palsied. The voice that had roared its commands so loudly as to shriek its message above the scream of shells now faltered and stammered until it could gain strength.
"And so—and so," it said, "you—my friend, the man I had learned to love, are a lawbreaker!"
There was another instant's pause, and the voice resumed, with sad censure, as the veteran, old and gray and stiff, took a step or two away from the door.
"A criminal in the eyes of all that is law, and discipline, and organization!"
He spoke with increasing vehemence, more coldly, more incisively, as he made his arraignment, and the gray eyebrows drew down and frowned fiercely over his steady old gray eyes.
"A living lie, are you," he went on with scorn, "a man under a false name! You told me that private reasons and a love of democracy made you assume the very name by which you are known,—you, a man of that noble birth for which, from infancy, I have been taught respect! You, a cousin of Kings, in the veins of whose mother flowed the blood royal,—the blood that is supposed to be filtered through honor lest it carry anything of the ugly, the dishonest, the base! Count Von Walthall is a petty thief from the government that has shielded him, and a parasite on the glorious country that has accepted him as an honest man,—a rogue, a rascal, a betrayer of honesty! And I have loved him, and called him friend, I who have fought for law and honor until my body bends beneath the burden of its scars! Ah, God! That one of your blood should come to this! That I should come to this, that I loved you! That I cannot go back to my Kaiser and tell him, that fine old man, that I met you, and that you have done well! That I can never again speak your name, or, if compelled to do so, that the words cannot be uttered without a blush!"
For a moment, as he spoke, Herr Roth tried to assume that dignity for which he had been known throughout the mountainside; then slowly he withered back under this fierce torrent of denunciation, settled slowly, like one stricken, into his chair, lower and lower, all the character lines of his jolly, finely bred face seaming, and aging, and pleading, until at last he put his hands up and bent over into them. He lifted his head, and wet his dry lips, and threw his arms wide. One hand struck the chessboard, and its kings and queens, its castles and knights, its bishops and pawns, all went clattering to the floor as if they, fighting pieces all, had crumbled into disorganization and disgrace. He had not time to speak his plea. The grim old figure before him had straightened rigidly, as if it had its defined and undeviating code to earn, out to the end. The crippled arm came to the salute.
"Count Von Walthall, I bid you good-night, and farewell!" In one brusk movement the General clicked his heels together, whirled, and threw open the door.
SERGEANT WOLSBACH!" he called. "Forward! We go now!" and led the way across the room that had meant so much to him in his convalescence, out through the door into its spacious old hallway, out through another door, and into the night. Wolsbach shut the door behind him with machinelike precision.
"The boat? Shall I bring the boat?" he asked quietly, as befits a man who has heard a tragedy, approved of his superior's action, and has already buried it forever in his mind.
"We will take one of the l mats at the dock," was the General's gruff reply. "You will attend to having it returned tomorrow."
And that was the last civilian duty attended to by Sergeant Wolsbach in those mountains: for the parade orders on the following morning were peremptory and brief. General Friedrich von Bentz had decided to depart immediately. The rattling old stage drew up to the doorway, and he clambered in, unassisted. As it drove away he looked neither to the right nor the left, at the high hills on one side that he had loved, nor at the lake that stretched its wide band of sparkling water out to the shores of the island on which so many times, contented, he had stopped. He was only an old, old man, scarred and battered, staring downward at his clasped fingers from eyes that were filled with a great melancholy. The stage rattled slowly away, and after it trudged that guard of men picked from the ranks of war 1 because their service had been true and worthy. The old tavern appeared to look after them with regret, and the mountains and wide-flung beauty of the highlands stood stolid and still.
IN the musty archives of the Treasury Department, if it was filed there, and unless it has crumbled, as has the old mill for these many years, might be found this strange letter. It is what is sometimes called by the quiet, cynical, capable men of the department a "conscience letter," and it carries a pathetic meaning in its lines.
"The writer of this," it reads, "was once a gentleman. Wanderlust, adventure, and avarice proved the undoing of his soul. For some years he conducted an illicit still, and fattened therefrom. The truth was told him at last by one brave enough to speak the truth, and so, repentant, he remits herewith in gold of the country that fostered him all that was legally due. A search for the distillery will disclose nothing: for it has been destroyed. The men who worked it are gone to the places whence they came. The boats that carried its product to its market are scuttled and lie beneath the waters of a lake. And the gentlemen who read this, and accept this conscience fund, may know that the malefactor, guilty and sore at heart, returning to his own land for all time, has paid the price; for he has lost a valiant and a noble friend!"
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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