The inheritance and the discharge papers

Adam's second enlistment passes without event — "from nothing to nothing is no time at all" — and he is discharged with sergeant's stripes at the Presidio in 1890. Still unable to go home, he becomes a bindlestiff, tramping from California to Omaha, down the Rio Grande to Brownsville, learning to beg and to make himself invisible. In Florida he is twice taken for vagrancy and put on a road gang; he escapes down a river, hides in the water while the hounds pass, steals clothes in Valdosta, and telegraphs Charles for a hundred dollars. Charles, who has just learned by letter that Cyrus is dead of pneumonia and has left over a hundred thousand dollars, sets a test question only Adam could answer: the pup. At home the brothers circle the money until Charles produces the discharge papers proving their father was never at Gettysburg, and says he thinks he stole it. Adam refuses the proof, keeps his faith, and takes the money.

The tramping years teach Adam to make himself invisible, which is what lets him come home unafraid: the brother who once terrified him has lost his hold. Then the inheritance turns the childhood question inside out. Charles loved his father and so suspects him; Adam did not and so believes in him, keeping faith the way people keep faith in God against the evidence.