So go home, he told himself. It was time to admit that he had been wrong. The adventure was over and he had to go home. He had been made a fool, first by Dominique and now by these Virginians who disliked him because he was a northerner. So he should go home. He might still be a soldier, indeed he should be a soldier, but he would fight for the North. He would fight for Old Glory, for the continuation of a glorious century of American progress and decency. He would give up the specious arguments that pretended slavery was not the issue, and instead join the crusade of righteousness and he suddenly imagined himself as a crusader with a red cross on his white surcoat galloping across the sunny uplands of history to defeat a huge wickedness.

He would go home. He had to go home for his soul’s sake, because otherwise he would stay enmeshed in the tangled dark of the wilderness. He was not yet sure just how he would manage to reach home and, for a few wild moments, he toyed with the idea of seizing his horse and just galloping free of this hilltop, except that the horses were all tethered and Colonel Faulconer, fearing a pursuit by northern cavalry, had insisted on setting sentries who would be sure to stop Starbuck. No, he decided, he would wait till he reached Faulconer Court House and there he would seek an honest interview with Washington Faulconer and confess his failure and his disappointment. He would then ask for help to go back home. He had an idea there were truce boats sailing up the James River and Faulconer would surely help him find a berth aboard one of those ships.

He felt the decision settle in his mind, and also the contentment of a choice well made. He even slept a little, waking with a clearer eye and a happier heart. He felt like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, as if he had escaped from both Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and were once again heading toward the Celestial City.

Next day the raiding party reached and crossed the Shenandoah Valley, and the following morning they rode out of the Blue Ridge Mountains under a clearing sky and a warming wind. Scraps of white cloud blew northward, their shadows flying across the green good land. The disappointment of the raid seemed forgotten as the horses scented home and quickened into a trot. The town of Faulconer Court House was spread before them, the copper-coated cupola of its courthouse bright in the sun and the steeples of its churches rising sharp above the blossom-rich trees. Nearer, beside the quick river, the tents of the Legion lay white in the meadow.