The Secretary's steps led straight toward the house in which the wounded Colonel Harley lay, and when the voice bidding him to enter in response to his knock was feminine, he smiled slightly, entered with light step, and bowed with all the old school's courteous grace over the hand of Helen Harley.

"There are some women, Miss Harley," he said, "who do not fear war and war's alarms."

"Some, Mr. Sefton!" she replied. "There are many—in the South, I know—and there must be as many in the North."

"It is your generous heart that speaks," he said, and then he turned to Colonel Harley, who was claiming the attention of an old acquaintance.

The two men shook hands with great warmth. Here was one who received the Secretary without reserve. Miss Harley, watching, saw how her brother hung upon the words of this accomplished man of the world; how he listened with a pleased air to his praise and how he saw in the Secretary a great man and a friend.

He asked Helen presently if she would not walk with him a little in the camp and her brother seconded the idea. He was not intentionally selfish, and he loved his sister.

"She sits here all the time nursing me," he said, "when I'm almost well, and she needs the fresh air. Take her out, Mr. Sefton, and I'll thank you if she doesn't."

But she was willing to go. She was young; red blood flowed in her veins; she wished to be happy; and the world, despite this black cloud of war which hung over her part of it, was curious and interesting. She was not fond of close rooms and sick beds, so with a certain relief she walked forth by the side of the Secretary.

It was another of those beautiful days in May which clothe the Virginia earth in a gauze of spun silver. Nature was blooming afresh, and peace, disturbed by the vain battle of the night before, had returned to the armies.

"It seems to me a most extraordinary thing to behold these two armies face to face and yet doing nothing," said Helen.

"Wars consist of much more than battles," replied the Secretary.

"I am learning that," she said.

She looked about her with eager interest, custom not dimming to her the strange sights of an army in camp and on the eve of a great conflict. Nothing was like what she imagined it would be. The soldiers seemed to have no fear of death; in fact, nothing, if they could be judged by their actions, was further from their thoughts; they were gay rather than sad, and apparently were enjoying life with an indifference to circumstances that was amazing.

They were joined presently by Prescott, who thought it no part of his cue to avoid the Secretary. Mr. Sefton received him with easy courtesy, and the three strolled on together.

The Secretary asked the news of the camp, and Prescott replied that the Reverend Doctor Warren, a favourite minister, was about to preach to the soldiers.

"He is worth hearing," said Prescott. "Doctor Warren is no ordinary man, and this is Sunday, you know."

This army, like other armies, included many wild and lawless men who cherished in their hearts neither the fear of God nor the fear of man; but the South was religious, and if the battle or march did not forbid, Sunday was observed with the rites of the church. The great Jackson, so eager for the combat on other days, would not fight on Sunday if it could be helped.

The crowd was gathering already to hear the minister, who would address them from a rude little platform built in the centre of a glade.

The day was so calm, so full of the May bloom that Helen felt its peace steal over her, and for the moment there was no war; this was not an army, but just a great camp-meeting in the woods, such as the South often had and still has.

The soldiers were gathered already to the number of many thousands, some sitting on stumps and logs and others lying on the ground. All were quiet, inspired with respect for the man and his cloth.

"Let us sit here and listen," said Prescott, and the three, sitting on a convenient log, waited.

Doctor Warren, for he was an M.A. and a Ph.D. of a great American university and had taken degrees at another in Germany, ascended his rude forest pulpit. He was then about forty years of age; tall, thin, with straight black hair, slightly long, and with angular but intellectual features.

"A good man," thought Helen, and she was deeply impressed by his air of authority and the respect that he so evidently inspired.

He spoke to them as to soldiers of the cross, and he made his appeal directly to their hearts and minds, never to their passions. He did not inquire into the causes of the conflict in which they were engaged, he had no criticism for the men on the other side; he seemed rather to include them in his address. He said it was a great war, marked by many terrible battles as it would be marked by many more, and he besought them so to bear themselves that whatever the issue none could say that he had not done his duty as he saw it. And whether they fell in battle or not, that would be the great comfort to those who were at home awaiting their return.

Prescott noticed many general officers in the crowd listening as attentively as the soldiers. All sounds in the camp had died and the speaker's clear voice rose now and penetrated far through the forest. The open air, the woods, the cannon at rest clothed the scene with a solemnity that no cathedral could have imparted. The same peace enfolded the Northern army, and it required but little fancy to think that the soldiers there were listening, too. It seemed at the moment an easy and natural thing for them both to lay down their arms and go home.

The minister talked, too, of home, a place that few of those who heard him had seen in two years or more, but he spoke of it not to enfeeble them, rather to call another influence to their aid in this struggle of valour and endurance. Prescott saw tears rise more than once in the eyes of hardened soldiers, and he became conscious again of the power of oratory over the Southern people. The North loved to read and the South to hear speeches; that seemed to him to typify the difference in the sections.

The minister grew more fiery and more impassioned. His penetrating voice reached far through the woods and around him was a ring of many thousands. Few have ever spoken to audiences so large and so singular; of women there were not twenty, just men, and men mostly young, mere boys the majority, but with faces brown and scarred and clothing tattered and worn, men hardened to wounds and reckless of death, men who had seen life in its wildest and most savage phases. But all the brown and scarred faces were upturned to the preacher, and the eyes of the soldiers as they listened gleamed with emotional fire. The wind moaned now and then, but none heard it. Around them the smoky camp-fires flared and cast a distorting light over those who heard.

Prescott's mind, as he listened to the impassioned voice of the preacher and looked at the brown, wild faces of those who listened, inevitably went back to the Crusades. There was now no question of right or wrong, but he beheld in it the spirit of men stirred by their emotions and gathering a sort of superhuman fire for the last and greatest conflict, for Armageddon. Here was the great drama played against the background of earth and sky, and all the multitude were actors.

The spirit of the preacher, too, was that of the crusading priest. The battlefields before them were but part of the battle of life; it was their duty to meet the foe there as bravely as they met the temptation of evil, and then he preached of the reward afterward, the Heaven to come. His listeners began to see a way into a better life through such a death, and many shook with emotion.

The spell was complete. The wind still moaned afar, and the fires still flared, casting their pallid light, but all followed the preacher. They saw only his deepset, burning eyes, the long pale face, and the long black hair that fell around it. They followed only his promises of death and life. He besought them to cast their sins at the feet of the Master—to confess and prepare for the great day to come.

Prescott was a sober man, one who controlled his emotions, but he could not help being shaken by the scene, the like of which the world has not witnessed since the Crusades—the vast forest, the solemn sky overhead, the smoky fires below, and the fifty thousand in the shadow of immediate death who hung on the words of one man.

The preacher talked of olden days, of the men who, girding themselves for the fight, fell in the glory of the Lord. Theirs was a beautiful death, he said, and forgiveness was for all who should do as they and cast away their sins. Groans began to arise from the more emotional of the soldiers; some wept, many now came forward and, confessing their sins, asked that prayers be said for their souls. Others followed and then they went forward by thousands. Over them still thundered the voice of the preacher, denouncing the sin of this world and announcing the glory of the world to come. Clouds swept up the heavens and the fires burned lower, but no one noticed. Before them flashed the livid face and burning eyes of the preacher, and he moved them with his words as the helmsman moves the ship.

Denser and denser grew the throng that knelt at his feet and begged for his prayers, and there was the sound of weeping. Then he ceased suddenly and, closing his eyes and bending his head, began to pray. Involuntarily the fifty thousand, too, closed their eyes and bent their heads.

He called them brands snatched from the burning; he devoted their souls to God. There on their knees they had confessed their sins and he promised them the life everlasting. New emotions began to stir the souls of those who mourned. Death? What was that? Nothing. A mere dividing place between mortality and immortality, a mark, soon passed, and nothing more. They began to feel a divine fire. They welcomed wounds and death, the immortal passage, and they longed for the battlefield and the privilege of dying for their country. They thought of those among their comrades who had been so fortunate as to go on before, and expected joyfully soon to see them again.

Prescott looked up once, and the scene was more powerful and weird than any he had ever seen before. The great throng of people stood there with heads bowed listening to the single voice pouring out its invocation and holding them all within its sweep and spell.

The preacher asked the blessing of God on every one and finished his prayer. Then he began to sing:

"I've found a friend in Jesus, He is everything to me, He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul; The Lily of the Valley in Him alone I see— All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.

"He's my comfort in trouble, In sorrow He's my stay; He tells me every care on Him to roll. He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul."

He sang one verse alone, and then the soldiers began to join, at first by tens, then by hundreds and then by thousands, until the grand chorus, rolling and majestic, of fifty thousand voices swelled through all the forest:

"He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star, He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul."

The faces of the soldiers were no longer sad. They were transfigured now. Joy had come after sorrow and then forgiveness. They heard the promise.

"The best of all ways to prepare soldiers for battle," said a cynical voice at Prescott's elbow.

It was Mr. Sefton.

"But it is not so intended," rejoined Prescott.

"Perhaps not, but it will suffice."

"His is what I call constructive oratory," presently continued the Secretary in a low voice. "You will notice that what he says is always calculated to strengthen the mind, although the soldiers themselves do not observe it."

"But no man could be more sincere," said Helen.

"I do not doubt it," replied the Secretary.

"It is impossible for me to think that the men singing here may fall in battle in a few days," said Helen.

The singing ended and in a few minutes the soldiers were engaged in many avocations, going about the business of the day. Prescott and Mr. Sefton took Helen back to the house and then each turned to his own task.

Several officers were gathered before a camp-fire on the following morning mending their clothes. They were in good humour because Talbot was with them and gloom rarely endured long in his presence.

"After all, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" said Talbot. "Will it profit me more to be killed in a decent uniform than in a ragged one?"

"Don't you want to make a respectable casualty?" asked Prescott.

"Yes; but I don't like to work so much for it," replied Talbot. "It's harder to dress well now than it is to win a battle. You can get mighty little money and it's worth mighty little after you get it. The 'I promise to pay' of the Confederate States of America has sunk terribly low, boys."

He held up a Confederate bill and regarded it with disgust.

"It would take a wheelbarrow full of those to buy a decent suit of clothes," he said. "Do you know the luck I had yesterday when I tried to improve my toilet?"

All showed interest.

"More than six months' pay was due me," said Talbot, "and thinking I'd buy something to wear, I went around to old Seymour, the paymaster, for an installment. 'See here, Seymour,' I said, 'can't you let me have a month's pay. It's been so long since I have had any money that I've forgotten how it looks. I want to refresh my memory.'

"You ought to have seen the look old Seymour put on. You'd have thought I'd asked him for the moon. 'Talbot' he said, 'you're the cheekiest youngster I've met in a long time.'

"'But the army owes me six months' pay,' I said. 'What's that got to do with it?' he asked. 'I'd like to know what use a soldier has for money?' Then he looked me up and down as if it wouldn't work a footrule hard to measure me. But I begged like a good fellow—said I wanted to buy some new clothes, and I'd be satisfied if he'd let me have only a month's pay. At last he gave me the month's pay—five hundred dollars—in nice new Confederate bills, and I went to a sutler to buy the best he had in the way of raiment.

"I particularly wanted a nice new shirt and found one just to suit me. 'The price?' I said to the sutler. 'Eight hundred dollars,' he answered, as if he didn't care whether I took it or not. That settled me so far as the shirt question was concerned—I'd have to wait for that until I was richer; but I looked through his stock and at last I bought a handkerchief for two hundred dollars, two paper collars for one hundred dollars each, and I've got this hundred dollars left. Oh, I'm a bargainer!"

And he waved the Confederate bill aloft in triumph.

"I'd give this hundred dollars for a good cigar," he added, "but there isn't one in the army."

One of the men sang:

"I am busted, mother, busted. Gone the last unhappy check; And the infernal sutler's prices Make every pocket-book a wreck."

Prescott sat reading a newspaper. It was the issue of the Richmond Whig of April 30, 1864, and his eyes were on these paragraphs:

"That the great struggle is about to take place for the possession of Richmond is conceded on all sides. The enemy is marshaling his cohorts on the Rapahannock and the Peninsula, and that a last desperate effort will be made to overrun Virginia and occupy her ancient capital is admitted by the enemy himself. What, then, becomes the duty of the people of Richmond in view of the mighty conflict at hand? It is evidently the same as that of the commander of a man-of-war who sails out of port to engage the foes of his flag in mortal combat. The decks are cleared for action; non-combatants are ordered below or ashore; the supply of ammunition and food is looked to, and a short prayer uttered that Heaven will favour the right and protect the land and the loved ones for whom the battle is waged.

"We sincerely hope and pray that the red waves of battle may not, as in 1862, roll and break and hiss against the walls of the capital, and the ears of our suffering but resolute people may never again be saluted by the reports of hostile guns. But our hopes may be disappointed; the enemy may come again as he has come before, and, for aught we know, the battle may be fought on these hills and in these streets. It is with a view of this possible contingency that we would urge upon our people to make all needful preparation for whatever fate betides them, and especially to give our brave and unconquerable defenders a clear deck and open field. And above all, let the living oracles of our holy religion, and pious men and women of every persuasion, remember that God alone giveth the victory, and that His ear is ever open to the prayer of the righteous."

* * * * *

Prescott's thoughts the next morning were of Lucia Catherwood, who had floated away from him in a sort of haze. It seemed a long time since they parted that night in the snow, and he found himself trying to reproduce her face and the sounds of her voice. Where was she now? With that army which hung like a thunder cloud on their front? He had no doubt of it. Her work would be there. He felt that they were going to meet again, and it would not be long.

That day the Southern breeze blew stronger and sweeter than ever. It came up from the Gulf, laden with a million odours, and the little wild flowers in delicate tints of pink and purple and blue peeped up amid the shades of the forest.

That night Grant, with one hundred and thirty thousand men and four hundred guns, crossed the Rapidan and advanced on the Army of Northern Virginia.

The fiercest and bloodiest campaign recorded since history rose from the past was about to begin.



CHAPTER XVII

THE WILDERNESS

There is in Virginia a grim and sterile region the name of which no American ever hears without a shudder. When you speak to him of the Wilderness, the phantom armies rise before him and he hears the thunder of the guns as the vast struggle sweeps through its shades. He sees, too, the legions of the dead strewn in the forest, a mighty host, and he sighs to think so many of his countrymen should have fallen in mutual strife.

It is a land that deserves its name. Nature there is cold and stern. The rock crops up and the thin red soil bears only scrub forest and weary bushes. All is dark, somber and lonely, as if the ghosts of the fallen had claimed it for their playground.

The woodchopper seeks his hut early at night, and builds high the fire for the comfort of the blaze. He does not like to wander in the dark over the ground where vanished armies fought and bled so long. He sees and hears too much. He knows that his time—the present—has passed with the day, and that when the night comes it belongs again to the armies; then they fight once more, though the battle is soundless now, amid the shades and over the hills and valleys.

Now and then he turns from the fire and its comradeship and looks through the window into the darkness. He, too, shudders as he thinks of the past and remembers the long roll, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and the others. Even the poor woodchopper knows that this melancholy tract of ground has borne more dead men's bones than any other of which history tells, and now and then he asks why, but no one can give him the answer he wishes. They say only that the battles were fought, that here the armies met for the death struggle which both knew was coming and which came as they knew.

The Wilderness has changed but little in the generation since Grant and Lee met there. The sullen soil is sullen and unyielding still. As of old it crops up here in stone and there turns a thin red tint to the sun. The sassafras bushes and the scrub oaks moan sadly in the wind, and few human beings wander over the desolate hills and valleys.

At Gettysburg there is a city, and the battlefield is covered with monuments in scores and scores, and all the world goes to see them. The white marble and granite shafts and pillars and columns, the green hills and fields around, the sunshine and the sound of many voices are cheerful and tell of life; you are not with the dead—you are simply with the glories of the past.

But it is different when you come to the Wilderness. Here you really walk with ghosts. There are no monuments, no sunshine, no green grass, no voices; all is silent, somber and lonely, telling of desolation and decay. To many it is a more real monument than the clustering shafts of Gettysburg. All this silence, all this abandonment tell in solemn and majestic tones that here not one great battle was fought, but many; that here in one year shone the most brilliant triumph of the South; and here, in another year, she fought her death struggle.

When you walk among the bushes and the scrub oaks and listen to the desolate wind you need no inscription to tell you that you are in the Wilderness.



CHAPTER XVIII

DAY IN THE WILDERNESS

Helen Harley saw the sun rise in a shower of red and gold on a May morning, and then begin a slow and quiet sail up a sky of silky blue. It even touched the gloomy shades of the Wilderness with golden gleams, and shy little flowers of purple, nestling in the scant grass, held up their heads to the glow. From the window in the log house in which she had nursed her brother she looked out at the sunrise and saw only peace, and the leaves of the new spring foliage moving gently in the wind.

The girl's mind was not at rest. In the night she had heard the rumbling of wheels, the tread of feet, and many strange, muffled sounds. Now the morning was here and the usual court about her was missing. Gone were the epaulets, the plumes and the swords in sheath. The generals, Raymond and Winthrop, who had come only the day before. Talbot, Prescott and Wood, were all missing.

The old house seemed desolate, abandoned, and she was lonely. She looked through the window and saw nothing that lived among the bushes and the scrub oaks only the scant grass and the new spring foliage waving in the gentle wind. Here smouldered the remains of a fire and there another, and yonder was where the tent of the Commander had stood; but it was gone now, and not a sound came to her ears save those of the forest. She was oppressed by the silence and the portent.

Her brother lay upon the bed asleep in full uniform, his coat covering his bandages, and Mrs. Markham was in the next room, having refused to return to Richmond. She would remain near her husband, she said, but Helen felt absolutely alone, deserted by all the world.

No, not alone! There, coming out of the forest, was a single horseman, the grandest figure that she had ever seen—a man above six feet in height, as strong and agile as a panther, his head crowned with magnificent bushy black hair, and his face covered with a black beard, through which gleamed eyes as black as night. He rode, a very king, she thought.

The man came straight toward the window of the log house, the feet of his horse making no sound upon the turf. Here was one who had come to bid her good-by.

She put her hand through the open window, and General Wood, the mountaineer, bending low over his horse's neck, kissed it with all the grace and gallantry of an ancient knight.

"I hope that you will come back," she said softly.

"I will, I must, if you are here," he said.

He kissed her hand again.

"Your brother?" he added.

"He is still asleep."

"What a pity his wounds are so bad! We'll need him to-day."

"Is it coming? Is it really coming to-day, under these skies so peaceful and beautiful?" she asked in sudden terror, though long she had been prepared for the worst.

"Grant is in the Wilderness."

She knew what that meant and asked no more.

Wood's next words were those of caution.

"There is a cellar under this house," he said. "If the battle comes near you, seek shelter in it. You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

"And now good-by."

"Good-by," she said.

He kissed her hand again and, without another word, turned and rode through the forest and away. She watched him until he was quite out of sight, and then her eyes wandered off toward the east, where the new sun was still piling up glowing bands of alternate red and gold.

Her brother stirred on the bed and awoke. He was fretful that morning.

"Why is the place so silent?" he asked, with the feeling of a vain man who does not wish to be left alone.

"I do not know," she replied, though well she knew.

There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Markham entered, dressed as if for the street—fresh, blonde and smiling.

"You two are up early, Helen," she said. "What do you see there at the window?"

"Nothing," replied Helen. She did not tell any one of the parting with Wood. That belonged to her alone.

A coloured woman came with the breakfast, which was served on a little table beside Harley's bed. He propped himself up with a pillow and sat at the table with evident enjoyment. The golden glory of the new sun shone there through the window and fell upon them.

"How quiet the camp is!" said Mrs. Markham after awhile. "Surely the army sleeps late. I don't hear any voices or anything moving."

"No," said Helen.

"No, not a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

"Eh?" cried Harley.

His military instinct leaped up. Silence where noise has been is ominous.

"Helen," he said, "go to the window, will you?"

"No. I'll go," said Mrs. Markham, and she ran to the window, where she uttered a cry of surprise.

"Why, there is nothing here!" she exclaimed. "There are no tents, no guns, no soldiers! Everything is gone! What does it mean?"

The answer was ready.

From afar in the forest, low down under the horizon's rim, came the sullen note of a great gun—a dull, sinister sound that seemed to roll across the Wilderness and hang over the log house and those within it.

Harley threw himself on the bed with a groan of grief and rage.

"Oh, God," he cried, "that I should be tied here on such a day!"

Helen ran to the window but saw nothing—only the waving grass, the somber forest and the blue skies and golden sunshine above. The echo of the cannon shot died and again there was silence, but only for a moment. The sinister note swelled up again from the point under the horizon's rim far off there to the left, and it was followed by another, and more and more, until they blended into one deep and sullen roar.

Unconsciously Constance Markham, the cynical, the worldly and the self-possessed, seized Helen Harley's hand in hers.

"The battle!" she cried. "It is the battle!"

"Yes," said Helen; "I knew that it was coming."

"Ah, our poor soldiers!"

"I pity those of both sides."

"And so do I. I did not mean it that way."

The servant was cowering in a corner of the room. Harley sprang to his feet and stood, staggering.

"I must be at the window!" he said.

Helen darted to his support.

"But your wounds," she said. "You must think of them!"

"I tell you I shall stay at the window!" he exclaimed with energy. "If I cannot fight, I must see!"

She knew the tone that would endure no denial, and they helped him to the window, where they propped him in a chair with his eyes to the eastern forest. The glow of battle came upon his face and rested there.

"Listen!" he cried. "Don't you hear that music? It's the big guns, not less than twenty. You cannot hear the rifles from here. Ah if I were only there!"

The three looked continually toward the east, where a somber black line was beginning to form against the red-and-gold glow of the sunrise. Louder and louder sounded the cannon. More guns were coming into action, and the deep, blended and violent note seemed to roll up against the house until every log, solid as it was, trembled with the concussion. Afar over the forest the veil of smoke began to grow wider and thicker and to blot out the red-and-gold glory of the sunrise.

Harley bent his head. He was listening—not for the thunder of the great guns, but for the other sounds that he knew went with it—the crash of the rifles, the buzz and hiss of the bullets flying in clouds through the air, the gallop of charging horsemen, the crash of falling trees cut through by cannon shot, and the shouts and cries. But he heard only the thunder of the great guns now, so steady, so persistent and so penetrating that he felt the floor tremble beneath him.

He searched the forest with eyes trained for the work, but saw no human being—only the waving grass, the somber woods, and a scared lizard rattling the bark of a tree as he fled up it.

In the east the dull, heavy cloud of smoke was growing, spreading along the rim of the horizon, climbing the concave arch and blotting out all the glory of the sunrise. The heavy roar was like the sullen, steady grumbling of distant thunder, and the fertile fancy of Harley, though his eyes saw not, painted all the scene that was going on within the solemn shades of the Wilderness—the charge, the defense, the shivered regiments and brigades; the tread of horses, cannon shattered by cannon, the long stream of wounded to the rear, and the dead, forgotten amid the rocks and bushes. He had beheld many such scenes and he had been a part of them. But who was winning now? If he could only lift that veil of the forest!

Every emotion showed on the face of Harley. Vain, egotistic, and often selfish, he was a true soldier; his was the military inspiration, and he longed to be there in the field, riding at the head of his horsemen as he had ridden so often, and to victory. He thought of Wood, a cavalry leader greater than himself, doing a double part, and for a moment his heart was filled with envy. Then he flushed with rage because of the wounds that tied him there like a baby. What a position for him, Vincent Harley, the brilliant horseman and leader! He even looked with wrath upon his sister and Mrs. Markham, two women whom he admired so much. Their place was not here, nor was his place here with them. He was eaten with doubt and anxiety. Who was losing, who was winning out there beyond the veil of the forest where the pall of smoke rose? He struck the window-sill angrily with his fist.

"I hate this silence and desolation here around us," he exclaimed, "with all that noise and battle off there where we cannot see! It chills me!"

But the two women said nothing, still sitting with their hands in each other's and unconscious of it; forgetting now in this meeting of the two hundred thousand the petty personal feelings that had divided them.

Louder swelled the tumult. It seemed to Helen, oblivious to all else, that she heard amid the thunder of the cannon other and varying notes. There was a faint but shrill incessant sound like the hum of millions of bees flying swiftly, and another, a regular but heavier noise, was surely the tread of charging horsemen. The battle was rolling a step nearer to them, and she began to see, low down under the pall of smoke, flashes of fire like swift strokes of lightning. Then it rolled another step nearer and its tumult beat heavily and cruelly on the drums of her ears. Yet the deathly stillness in the scrub oaks around the house continued. They waved as peacefully as ever in the gentle wind from the west. It was still a battle heard but not seen.

She would have left the window to cower in the corner with the coloured woman who served them, but this struggle, of which she could see only the covering veil, held her appalled. It was misty, intangible, unlike anything of which she had read or heard, and yet she knew it to be real. They were in conflict, the North and the South, there in the forest, and she sat as one in a seat in a theatre who looked toward a curtained stage.

When she put her free hand once on the window-sill she felt beneath her fingers the faint, steady trembling of the wood as the vast, insistent volume of sound beat upon it. The cloud of smoke now spread in a huge, somber curve across all the east, and the swift flashes of fire were piercing through it faster and faster. The volume of sound grew more and more varied, embracing many notes.

"It comes our way," murmured Harley, to himself rather than to the women.

Helen felt a quiver run through the hand of Mrs. Markham and she looked at her face. The elder woman was pale, but she was not afraid. She, too, would not leave the window, held by the same spell.

"Surely it is a good omen!" murmured Harley; "the field of Chancellorsville, where we struck Hooker down, is in this same Wilderness."

"But we lost there our right arm—Jackson," said Mrs. Markham.

"True, alas!" said Harley.

The aspect of the day that had begun so bright and clear was changing. The great pall of smoke in the east gave its character to all the sky. From the west clouds were rolling up to meet it. The air was growing close, sultry and hot. The wind ceased to blow. The grass and the new leaves hung motionless. All around them the forest was still heavy and somber. The coloured woman in the corner began to cry softly, but from her chest. They could hear her low note under the roar of the guns, but no one rebuked her.

"It comes nearer and nearer," murmured Harley.

There was relief, even pleasure in his tone. He had forgotten his sister and the woman to whom his eyes so often turned. That which concerned him most in life was passing behind the veil of trees and bushes, and its sound filled his ears. He had no thought of anything else. It was widening its sweep, coming nearer to the house where he was tied so wretchedly by wounds; and he would see it—see who was winning—his own South he fiercely hoped.

The thoughts of brother and sister at that moment were alike. All the spirit and fire of the old South flushed in every vein of both. They were of an old aristocracy, with but two ambitions, the military and the political, and while they prayed for complete success in the end, they wanted another great triumph on the field of battle. Gettysburg, that insuperable bar, was behind them, casting its gloomy memory over the year between; but this might take its place, atoning for it, wiping it out. But there was doubt and fear in the heart of each; this was a new general that the North had, of a different kind from the old—one who did not turn back at a defeat, but came on again and hammered and hammered. They repeated to themselves softly the name "Grant." It had to them a short, harsh, abrupt sound, and it did not grow pleasant with repetition.

An odour, the mingled reek of smoke, burnt gunpowder, trampled dust and sweating men, reached them and was offensive to their nostrils. Helen coughed and then wiped her face with her handkerchief. She was surprised to find her cheeks damp and cold. Her lips felt harsh and dry as they touched each other.

The trembling of the house increased, and the dishes from the breakfast which they had left on the table kept up an incessant soft, jarring sound. The battle was still spreading; at first a bent bow, then a semi-circle, the horns of the crescent were now extending as if they meant to meet about the house, and yet they saw not a man, not a horse, not a gun; only afar off the swelling canopy of smoke, and the flashes of light through it, and nearer by the grass and the leaves, now hanging dull and lifeless.

Harley groaned again and smote the unoffending window-sill with his hand.

"Why am I here—why am I here," he repeated, "when the greatest battle of all the world is being fought?"

The clouds of smoke from the cannon and the clouds from the heated and heavy air continued to gather in both heavens and were now meeting at the zenith. The skies were dark, obscure and somber. Most trying of all was the continuous, heavy jarring sound made by the thunder of the guns. It got upon the nerves, it smote the brain cruelly, and once Helen clasped her hands over her ears to shut it out, but she could not; the sullen mutter was still there, no less ominous because its note was lower.

A sudden tongue of flame shot up in the east above the forest, but unlike the others did not go out again; it hung there a red spire, blood-red against the sky, and grew taller and broader.

"The forest burns!" murmured Harley.

"In May?" said Helen.

"What a cannonade it must be to set green trees on fire!" continued Harley.

The varying and shriller notes heard through the steady roar of the great guns now grew more numerous and louder; and most persistent among them was a nasty buzz, inconceivably wicked in its cry.

"The rifles! A hundred thousand of them at least!" murmured Harley, to whose ear all these sounds were familiar.

New tongues of fire leaped above the trees and remained there, blood-red against the sky; sparks at first fugitive and detached, then in showers and millions, began to fly. Columns of vapour and smoke breaking off from the main cloud floated toward the house and assailed those at the window until eyes and nostrils tingled. The strange, nauseous odour, the mingled reek of blood and dust, powder and human sweat grew heavier and more sickening.

Helen shuddered again and again, but she could not turn away. The whole look of the forest had now changed to her. She saw it through a red mist: all the green, the late green of the new spring, was gone. All things, the trees, the leaves, the grass and the bushes, seemed burnt, dull and dead.

"Listen!" cried Harley. "Don't you hear that—the beat of horses' feet! A thousand, five thousand of them! The cavalry are charging! But whose cavalry?"

His soul was with them. He felt the rush of air past him, the strain of his leaping horse under him, and then the impact, the wild swirl of blood and fire and death when foe met foe. Once more he groaned and struck the window-sill with an angry hand.

Nearer and nearer rolled the battle and louder and shriller grew its note. The crackle of the rifles became a crash as steady as the thunder of the great guns, and Helen began to hear, above all the sound of human voices, cries and shouts of command. Dark figures, perfectly black like tracery, began to appear against a background of pallid smoke, or ruddy flame, distorted, shapeless even, and without any method in their motions. They seemed to Helen to fly back and forth and to leap about as if shot from springs like jumping-jacks and with as little of life in them—mere marionettes. The great pit of fire and smoke in which they fought enclosed them, and to Helen it was only a pit of the damned. For the moment she had no feeling for either side; they were not fellow beings to her—they who struggled there amid the flame and the smoke and the falling trees and the wild screams of the wounded horses.

The coloured woman cowering in the corner continued to cry softly, but with deep sobs drawn from her chest, and Helen wished that she would stop, but she could not leave the window to rebuke her even had she the heart to do so.

The smoke, of a close, heavy, lifeless quality, entered the window and gathered in the rooms, penetrating everything. The floor and the walls and the furniture grew sticky and damp, but the three at the window did not notice it. They had neither eyes nor heart now save for the tremendous scene passing before them. No thought of personal danger entered the mind of either woman. No, this was a somber but magnificent panorama set for them, and they, the spectators, were in their proper seats. They were detached, apart from the drama which was of another age and another land, and had no concern with them save as a picture.

Helen could not banish from her mind this panoramic quality of the battle. She was ashamed of herself; she ought to draw from her heart sympathy for those who were falling out there, but they were yet to her beings of another order, and she remained cold—a spectator held by the appalling character of the drama and not realizing that those who played the part were human like herself.

"The battle is doubtful," said Harley.

"How do you know?"

"See how it veers to and fro—back and forth and back and forth it goes again. If either side were winning it would all go one way. Do you know how long we have been here watching?"

"I have no idea whatever."

He looked at his watch and then pointed upward at the heavens where in the zenith a film of light appeared through the blur of cloud and smoke.

"There's the sun," he said; "it's noon. We've been sitting here for hours. The time seems long and again it seems short. Ah, if I only knew which way fortune inclined! Look how that fire in the forest is growing!"

Over in the east the red spires and pillars and columns united into one great sheet of flame that moved and leaped from tree to tree and shot forth millions of sparks.

"That fire will not reach us," said Harley. "It will pass a half-mile to the right."

But they felt its breath, far though hot, and again Helen drew her handkerchief across her burning face. The deadly, sickening odour increased. A light wind arose, and a fine dust of ashes, borne on its breath, began to enter the window and sweep in at every possible crevice and cranny of the old house. It powdered the three at the window and hung a thin, gray and pallid veil over the floor and the scanty furniture. The faint jarring of the wood, so monotonous and so persistent, never ceased. And distinctly through the sounds they heard the voice of the coloured woman, crying softly from her chest, always the same, weird, unreal and chilling.

The struggle seemed to the three silent watchers to swing away a little, the sounds of human voices died, the cries, the commands were heard no more; but the volume of the battle grew, nevertheless. Harley knew that new regiments, new brigades, new batteries were coming into action; that the area of conflict was spreading, covering new fields and holding the old. He knew by the rising din, ever swelling and beating upon the ear, by the vast increase in the clouds of smoke, the leaping flashes of flame and the dust of ashes, now thick and drifting, that two hundred thousand men were eye to eye in battle amid the gloomy thickets and shades of the Wilderness, but God alone knew which would win.

Some of the awe that oppressed the two women began to creep over Harley and to chill the blood in his veins. He had gone through many battles; he had been with Pickett in that fiery rush up Cemetery Hill in the face of sixty thousand men and batteries heaped against each other; but there he was a part of things and all was before him to see and to hear: here he only sat in the dusk of the smoke and the ashes and the clouds, while the invisible battle swung to and fro afar. He heard only the beat of its footsteps as it reeled back and forth, and saw only the mingled black and fiery mists and vapours of its own making that enclosed it.

The dun clouds were still rolling up from both heavens toward the zenith, shot now and then with yellow streaks and scarlet gleams. Sometimes they threw back in a red glare the reflection of the burning forest, and then again the drifting clouds of smoke and ashes and dust turned the whole to a solid and dirty brown. It was now more than a battle to Harley. Within that cloud of smoke and flashing flame the fate of a nation hung—the South was a nation to him—and before the sun set the decree might be given. He was filled with woe to be sitting there looking on at so vast an event. Vain, selfish and superficial, depths in his nature were touched at last. This was no longer a scene set as at a theatre, upon which one might fight for the sake of ambition or a personal glory. Suddenly he sank into insignificance. The fortunes or the feelings of one man were lost in mightier issues.

"It's coming back!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

The battle again approached the old house, the clouds swept up denser and darker, the tumult of the rifles and the great guns grew louder; the voices, the cries and the commands were heard again, and the human figures, distorted and unreal, reappeared against the black or fiery background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first did not depart.

"It is all around us," said Mrs. Markham.

Helen looked up and saw that her words were true. The battle now made a complete circuit of the house, though yet distant, and from every point came the thunder of the cannon and the rifles, the low and almost rhythmic tread of great armies in mortal struggle, and the rising clouds of dust, ashes and smoke shot with the rapid flame of the guns, like incessant sheet-lightning.

The clouds had become so dense that the battle, though nearer, grew dimmer in many of its aspects; but the distorted and unreal human figures moved like shadows on a screen and were yet visible, springing about and crossing and recrossing in an infinite black tracery that the eye could not follow. But to neither of the three did the thought of fear yet come. They were still watchers of the arena, from high seats, and the battle was not to take them in its coils.

The flame, the red light from the guns, grew more vivid, and was so rapid and incessant that it became a steady glare, illuminating the vast scene on which the battle was outspread; the black stems of the oaks and pines, the guns—some wheelless and broken now, the charging lines, fallen horses scattered in the scrub, all the medley and strain of a titanic battle.

The sparks flew in vast showers. Bits of charred wood from the burning forest, caught up by the wind, began to fall on the thin roof of the old house, and kept up a steady, droning patter. The veil of gray ashes upon the floor and on the scanty furniture grew thicker. The coloured woman never ceased for a moment to cry drearily.

"It is still doubtful!" murmured Harley.

His keen, discerning eye began to see a method, an order in all this huge tumult—signs of a design, and of another design to defeat it—the human mind seeking to achieve an end. One side was the North and another the South—but which was his own he could not tell. For the present he knew not where to place his sympathies, and the fortunes of the battle were all unknown to him.

He looked again at his watch. Mid-afternoon. Hours and hours had passed and still the doubtful battle hung on the turning of a hair; but his study of it, his effort to trace its fortune through all the intricate maze of smoke and flame, did not cease. He sought to read the purposes of the two master minds which marshaled their forces against each other, to evolve order from chaos and to read what was written already.

Suddenly he uttered a low cry. He could detect now the colour of the uniforms. There on the right was the gray, his own side, and Harley's soul dropped like lead in water. The gray were yielding slowly, almost imperceptibly, but nevertheless were yielding. The blue masses were pouring upon them continually, heavier and heavier, always coming to the attack.

Harley glanced at the women. They, too, saw as he saw. He read it in the deathly pallor of their faces, their lips parted and trembling, the fallen look of their eyes. It was not a mere spectacle now—something to gaze at appalled, not because of the actors in it, but because of the spectacle itself. It was beginning now to have a human interest, vital and terrible—the interest of themselves, their friends and the South to which they belonged.

Helen suddenly remembered a splendid figure that had ridden away from her window that morning—the figure of the man who alone had come to bid her good-by, he who had seemed to her a very god of war himself; and she knew he must be there in that flaming pit with the other marionettes who reeled back and forth as the master minds hurled fresh legions anew to the attack. If not there, one thing alone had happened, and she refused to think of that, though she shuddered; but she would not picture him thus. No; he rode triumphant at the head of his famous brigade, sword in hand, bare and shining, and there was none who could stand before its edge. It was with pride that she thought of him, and a faint blush crept over her face, then passed quickly like a mist before sunshine.

The battle shifted again and the faces of the three who watched at the window reflected the change in a complete and absolute manner. The North was thrust back, the South gained—a few feet perhaps, but a gain nevertheless, and joy shone on the faces where pallor and fear had been before. To the two women this change would be permanent. They could see no other result. The North would be thrown back farther and farther, overwhelmed in rout and ruin. They looked forward to it eagerly and in fancy saw it already. The splendid legions of the South could not be beaten.

But no such thoughts came to Harley. He felt all the joy of a momentary triumph, but he knew that the fortune of the battle still hung in doubt. Strain eye and ear as he would, he could see no decrease in the tumult nor any decline in the energy of the figures that fought there, an intricate tracery against the background of red and black. The afternoon was waning, and his ears had grown so used to the sounds without that he could hear everything within the house. The low, monotonous crying of the coloured woman was as distinct as if there were no battle a half-mile away.

The dense fine ashes crept into their throats and all three coughed repeatedly, but did not notice it, having no thought for anything save for what was passing before them. They were powdered with it, face, hair and shoulders, until it lay over them like a veil, but they did not know nor care.

The battle suddenly changed again and the South was pressed back anew. Once more their faces fell, and the hearts of the women, raised to such heights, sank to the depths. It was coming nearer, too. There was a fierce hiss, a shrill scream and something went by.

"A shell passed near us then," said Harley, "and there's another. The battle is swinging close."

Still the element of fear did not enter into the minds of any of the three, not even into those of the women, although another shell passed by and then others, all with a sharp, screaming note, full of malignant ferocity. Then they ceased to come and the battle again hovered in the distance, growing redder and redder than ever against a black background as the day darkened and the twilight approached. Its sound now was a roar and a hum—many varying notes blending into a steady clamour, which was not without a certain rhythm and music—like the simultaneous beating of a million mighty bass drums.

"They still press us back," murmured Harley; "the battle is wavering."

With the coming of the twilight the light in the forest of scrub oaks and pines, the light from so many cannon and rifles, assumed vivid and unearthly hues, tinged at the edges with a yellow glare and shot through now and then with blue and purple streaks. Over it hung the dark and sullen sky.

"It comes our way again," said Harley.

It seemed now to converge upon them from all sides, to contract its coils like a python, but still the house was untouched, save by the drifting smoke and ashes. Darker and darker the night came down, a black cap over all this red struggle, but with its contrast deepening the vivid colours of the combat that went on below.

Nearer it came, and suddenly some horsemen shot from the flame-cloud and stood for a moment in a huddled group, as if they knew not which way to turn. They were outlined vividly against the red battle and their uniforms were gray. Even Helen could see why they hesitated and doubted. Riderless horses galloped out of the smoke and, with the curious attraction that horses have for the battlefield, hovered near, their empty saddles on their backs.

A groan burst from Harley.

"My God," he cried, "those cavalrymen are going to retreat!"

Then he saw something that struck him with a deeper pang, though he was silent for the moment. He knew those men. Even at the distance many of the figures were familiar.

"My own troop!" he gasped. "Who could have thought it?"

Then he added, in sad apology: "They need a leader."

The horsemen were still in doubt, although they seemed to drift backward and away from the field of battle. A fierce passion lay hold of Harley and inflamed his brain. He saw his own men retreating when the fate of the South hung before them. He thought neither of his wounds nor of the two women beside him, one his sister. Springing to his feet while they tried in vain to hold him back, he cried out that he had lingered there long enough. He threw off their clinging hands, ran to the door, blood from his own wounds streaking his clothes, and they saw him rush across the open space toward the edge of the forest where the horsemen yet lingered. They saw him, borne on by excitement, seize one of the riderless horses, leap into the saddle and turn his face toward the battle. They almost fancied that they could hear his shout to his troops: "Come on, men; the way is here, not there!"

The horse he had seized was that of a slain bugler, and the bugle, tied by a string to the horn of the saddle, still hung there. Harley lifted it to his lips, blew a note that rose, mellow and inspiring, above all the roar of the cannon and the rifles, and then, at the head of his men, rode into the heart of the battle.



CHAPTER XIX

NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS

The two women clasped hands again and looked at each other as Harley disappeared amid the smoke.

"He has left us," said Mrs. Markham.

"Yes, but he has gone to his country's need," said his sister proudly.

Then they were silent again. Night, smoky, cloudy and dark, thick with vapours and mists, and ashes and odours that repelled, was coming down upon the Wilderness. Afar in the east the fire in the forest still burned, sending up tongues of scarlet and crimson over which sparks flew in myriads. Nearer by, the combat went on, its fury undimmed by the darkness, its thunder as steady, as persistent and terrible as before.

Helen was struck with horror. The battle, weird enough in the day, was yet more so in the darkness, and she could not understand why it did not close with the light. It partook of an inhuman quality, and that scene out there was more than ever to her an inferno because the flaming pit was now enclosed by outer blackness, completely cut off from all else—a world to itself in which all the passions strove, and none could tell to which would fall the mastery.

She felt for the moment horror of both sides, North and South alike, and she wished only that the unnatural combat would cease; she did not care then—a brief emotion, though—which should prove the victor.

It was a dark and solemn night that came down over the Wilderness and the two hundred thousand who had fought all day and still fought amid its thickets. Never before had that thin, red soil—redder now—borne such a crop, and many were glad that the darkness hid the sight from their enemies. The two Generals, the master minds who had propelled their mighty human machines against each other, were trying to reckon their losses—with the battle still in progress—and say to themselves whether they had won or lost. But this battlefield was no smooth and easy chessboard where the pawns might be moved as one wills and be counted as they fell, but a wilderness of thickets and forests and hills and swamps and valleys where the vast lines bent or twisted or interlaced and were lost in the shades and the darkness. Count and reckon as they would, the two Generals, equal in battle, face to face for the first time—could not give the total of the day. It was still an unadded sum, and the guns, despite the night, were steadily contributing new figures. This was the flaw in their arithmetic; nothing was complete, and they saw that they would have to begin again to-morrow. So, with this day's work yet unfinished, they began to prepare, sending for new regiments and brigades, massing more cannon, and planning afresh.

But all these things were unknown to Helen as she sat there at the window with Mrs. Markham. Her thoughts wandered again to Wood, that splendid figure on horseback, and she sought to identify him there among the black marionettes that gyrated against the red background. But with the advance of night the stage was becoming more indistinct, the light shed over it more pallid and shifting, and nothing certain could be traced there. All the black figures were mixed in a confused whirl, and where stood the South and where the North neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham could tell.

The night was thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours that oppressed throat and nostrils. The wind seemed to have died, but the fine dust of ashes still fell and the banks of nauseous smoke floated about aimlessly.

New fear assailed the two women for the first time—not so much fear of the shells and the bullets, but of the night and its mysteries and the weird combat that was still going on there where the light was so pallid and uncertain. Once again those who fought had become for them unreal—not human beings, but imps in an inferno of their own creation. They wished now that Harley was still with them. Whatever else he might be, he was brave and he would defend them. They looked around fearfully at the shadows that were encroaching upon the house. The rain of ashes and dust began to annoy them, and they moved a little closer to each other.

Helen glanced back once. The inside of the house was now in total darkness, and out of it came the monotonous wailing of the black woman. It occurred suddenly to Helen that the servant had crouched there crying the whole day long. But she said nothing to her and turned her back to the window.

"It is dying now," said Mrs. Markham.

The dull red light suddenly contracted and then broke into intermittent flashes. The sound of the cannon and the rifles sank into the low muttering of distant thunder. The two women felt the house under them cease to tremble. Then the intermittent flashes, too, disappeared, the low rumbling died away like the echo of a distant wind, and a sudden and complete silence, mystic and oppressive in its solemnity, fell over the Wilderness. Only afar the burning forest glowed like a torch.

The silence was for awhile more terrifying than the battle to which they had grown used. It hung over the forest and them like something visible that enfolded them. They breathed a hot, damp air heavy with ashes and smoke and dust, and their pulses throbbed painfully in their temples. Around them all the time was that horrible deathlike pall of silence.

They spoke, and their voices, attuned before to the roar of the battle, sounded loud, shrill and threatening. Both started, then laughed weakly.

"Is it really over?" exclaimed Mrs. Markham, hysterically.

"Until to-morrow," replied Helen, with solemn prevision.

She turned to the inner blackness of the house and lighted a candle, which she placed on the table, where it burned with an unsteady yellow light, illuminating the centre of the room with a fitful glow, but leaving the corners still in darkness. Everything lay under its veil of ashes—the table, the floor, and the bed on which Harley had slept.

Helen felt a strange sort of strength, the strength of excitement and resolve. She shook the black woman by the arm and bade her bring food.

"We must eat, for we shall have work to do," she said to Mrs. Markham, and nodded her head toward the outside.

It was the task of but a few minutes, and then the two women prepared to go forth. They knew they would be needed on this night, and they listened to hear the ominous sounds that would be a call to them. But they heard nothing. There was the same dead, oppressive stillness. Not a leaf, not a blade of grass seemed to stir. Helen looked once more from the window. Afar in the east the forest still burned, but the light there was pallid, grayish, more of the quality of moonlight than of fire, and looked dim. Directly before her in the forest where the battle had been all was black, silent and impenetrable. It was true there were faint lights here and there as of torches that had burned badly, but they were pin-points, serving only to deepen the surrounding blackness. Once or twice she thought she saw figures moving slowly, but she was not sure. She heard nothing.

Helen was in an unreal world. An atmosphere new, fiery and surcharged surrounded her, and in its heat little things melted away. Only the greater remained. That life in Richmond, bright and gay in many of its aspects, lived but a few days since, was ages and ages ago; it belonged to another world. Now she was in the forest with the battle and the dead, and other things did not count.

The door stood wide open, and as Helen prepared to go another woman entered there, a woman young like herself, tall, wrapped in a long brown cloak, but bareheaded. Two or three stray locks, dark but edged with red gold, strayed down. Her face, clear and feminine though it was, seemed to Helen stronger than any other woman's face that she had ever seen.

Helen knew instinctively that this was a woman of the North, or at least one with the North, and her first feeling was of hostility. So, as the two stood looking at each other, her gaze at first was marked by aversion and defiance. Who was she who had come with the other army, and why should she be there?

But Lucia Catherwood knew both the women in the old house. She remembered a day in Richmond when this girl, in lilac and rose, so fair a representative of her South, welcomed a gallant general; and she remembered another, a girl of the same years, lonely, an outcast in the farthest fringe of the crowd—herself. Her first emotion, too, was hostility, mingled with another feeling closely akin to it. She had seen her with Prescott, and unwillingly had confessed them well matched. She, too, asked what this woman was doing here in the forest beside the battle; but these feelings had only a short life with her. There were certain masculine qualities in Lucia Catherwood that tended to openness and frankness. She advanced and offered her hand like a man to Helen.

"We come under different flags," she said, "but we cannot be enemies here; we must be friends at least to-night, and I could wish that it should always be so."

Her smile was so frank, so open, so engaging that Helen, whose nature was the same, could resist her no longer. Despite herself she liked this girl, so tall, so strong, with that clear, pure face showing a self-reliance such as she had never before seen on the face of a woman. Mrs. Markham yet hung back a little, cool, critical and suspicious, but presently she cast this manner from her and spoke as if Lucia Catherwood was her friend, one of long and approved standing.

"I think that our work is to be the same," said Helen simply, and the other bowed in silent assent. Then the three went forth.

The field of battle, or rather the portion of it which came nearest to them—it wound for miles through the thickets—lay a half-mile from the house under the solid black veil of a cloudy night, the forest, and the smoke that yet drifted about aimlessly. Outside the house the strange, repellent odours grew stronger, as if it were the reek of some infernal pit.

They advanced over open ground, and the field of conflict was still black and soundless, though there was a little increase in the lights that moved dimly there. The smoke assailed them again, and fine ashes from the distant fire in the east now and then fell upon them. But they noticed none of these things, still advancing with steady step and unshrinking faces toward the forest.

The twinkling lights increased and sounds came at last. Helen would not say to herself what they were. She hoped that her fancy deceived her; but the three women did not stop. Helen looked at the tall, straight young figure beside her, so strong, so self-reliant, and she drew strength from her companion—now she was such. They walked side by side, and Mrs. Markham came behind. Helen began to feel the influence of a personality, a will stronger than her own, and she yielded to it without further question and without reluctance, having the feeling that she had known this girl a long time.

The trembling lights of the forest increased, moving about like so many fireflies in the night; the nauseous odours grew heavier, more persistent, and for a moment Helen felt ill; her head began to spin around at the thought of what she was going to see, but quickly she recovered herself and went on by the side of the girl who never faltered. Helen wondered at such courage, and wondering, she admired.

The ground grew rougher, set with tiny hillocks and stones and patch after patch of scrub bushes. Once Helen stumbled against something that felt cold even through the leather of her shoe, and she shuddered. But it was only a spent cannon ball lying peacefully among the bushes, its mission ended.

They reached burnt ground—spots where the scanty grass or the bushes had been set on fire by the cannon or the rifles. Many places still burned slowly and sent up languid sparks and dull smoke. In other places the ground was torn as if many ploughs had been run roughly over it, and Helen knew that the shells and the cannon balls had passed in showers. There were other objects, too, lying very quiet, but she would not look at them, though they increased fast as they went on, lying like seed sown above ground.

They were at the edge of the forest now, and here the air was thicker and darker. The mists and vapours floated among the trees and lay like warm, wet blankets upon their faces. They saw now many moving figures, some bending down as if they would lift something from the earth, and others who held lights. Occasionally they passed women like themselves, but not often. Some of the men were in gray uniform and some in blue, but they passed and repassed each other without question, doing the work they had come there to do.

Here in the forest the area of burnt ground was larger, and many coils of smoke rose languidly to join the banks of it that towered overhead. The still objects, too, were lying as far as one could see, in groups here, somewhat scattered there, but the continuity never broken, many with their faces upturned to the sky as if they awaited placidly the last call. Helen was struck by this peace, this seeming confidence in what was to come. The passage, then, had not been so hard! Here, when she stood in the centre of it all, the old feelings of awe returned, and the real world, the world that she had known before this day, swung farther and farther away.

There was still but little noise, for those who yet lived were silent, waiting patiently, and the vast peace was more powerful in its impression upon the mind than any tumult could have been. Helen looked up once at the skies. They were black and overcast. But few stars twinkled there. It was a fit canopy for the Wilderness, the gloomy forest that bore such a burden. From a far point in the southwest came the low rumble of thunder, and lightning, like the heat-lightning of a summer night, glimmered fitfully. Then there was a faint, sullen sound, the report of a distant cannon shot. Helen started, more in anger than terror. Would they fight again at such a time? She felt blame for both, but the shot was not repeated then. A signal gun, she thought, and went on, unconsciously going where the strong young figure of Lucia Catherwood led the way. She heard presently another distant cannon shot, its solemn echoes rolling all around the horizon, but she paid no heed to it. Her mind was now for other things.

An inky sky overhung the battlefield and all it held. Those nights in the Wilderness were among the blackest in both ways this country has ever known. Brigades and batteries moving in the dense scrub, seeking better places for the fresh battle on the morrow, wandered sometimes through each other's lines. Soldiers, not knowing whether they were among friends or enemies, and not caring, drank in the darkness from the same streams, and, overpowered by fatigue, North and South alike often slept a soundless sleep under trees not fifty yards from one another; but the two Generals, who were the supreme expression of the genius of either side, never slept. They had met for the first time; each nearly always a victor before, neither had now won. The result yet to come lay hidden in the black Wilderness, and by smoking camp-fires they planned for the next day, knowing well that they would meet again in a combat fiercer, longer and deadlier than ever, the one always seeking to drive on, the other always seeking to hold him back.

The Wilderness enclosed many secrets that night, hiding dead and living alike. Many of the fallen lay unseen amid the ravines and hollows, and the burning forest was their funeral pyre. Never did the Wilderness more deserve its name; gloomy at any time, it had new attributes of solemn majesty. Everything seemed to be in unison with those who lay there—the pitchy blackness, the low muttering of distant thunder, the fitful glimmer of the lightning, the stems of trees twisted and contorted by the gleam of the uncertain flashes, the white faces of the slain upturned to the sky seen dimly by the same light, the banks of smoke and vapour yet floating through the forest, the strange, repellent odours, and the heavy, melancholy silence.

Those who had come upon the field after the night began worked without talk, the men from either side passing and repassing each other, but showing no hostility. The three women, too, began to help them, doing the errand upon which they had come, and their service was received without question and without comment. No one asked another why he was there; his duty lay plain before him.

It was Lucia Catherwood who took the lead, neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham disputing her fitness for the place, too apparent to all to be denied; it was she who never flinched, who, if she spoke at all, spoke words of cheer, whose strength and courage seemed never to fail.

Thus the hours passed, and the character of the night in the Wilderness did not change. There was yet compared with the tumult of the day a heavy, oppressive silence; the smoke and the vapours did not go away, the heavy atmosphere did not thin, and at intervals the distant thunder rumbled and the fitful lightning glared over a distorted forest.

The three worked in silence, like those around them, faithful, undaunted. Mrs. Markham, the cynical and worldly, was strangely changed, perhaps the most changed of the three; all her affectations were gone, and she was now only an earnest woman. And while the three worked they always watched for one man. And this man was not the same with any one of the three.

It was past midnight and Helen did not know how long she had been upon the battlefield, working as she did in a kind of a dream, or rather mist, in which everything was fanciful and unreal, with her head full of strange sights and unheard sounds, when she saw two men ride side by side and silently out of the black forest—two figures, one upright, powerful, the other drooping, with head that swayed slightly from side to side.

She knew them at once despite the shadows of the trees and the faint moonlight—and it was what her thoughts had told her would come true. It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erect and so powerful could fall; nor had he.

She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them. Harley's head swayed slightly from side to side, and his clothing showed red in the dim moonlight. Wood held him in the saddle with one hand and guided the two horses with the other. Both women were white to the lips, but it was Helen who spoke first.

"I expected you," she said to Wood.

Wood replied that Harley was not hurt save by exhaustion from his previous wounds. He had come, too, at a critical moment, and his coming had been worth much to the South. But now he was half unconscious; he must rest or die. The General spoke in simple words, language that one would have called dialect, but Helen did not think of those things; his figure was grander than ever before to her, because, despite the battle, he had remembered to bring back her brother.

Mrs. Markham was quiet, saying no word, but she went with them to the house, where Harley was placed on the very bed on which he had slept the night before. Lucia Catherwood did not turn back, and was left alone on the field, but she was neither afraid nor lonely. She, too, was looking for some one—one whom she was in dread lest she find and whom she wished to find nevertheless. But she had a feeling—how or whence it came she did not know—that she would find him there. Always while she helped the others, hour after hour, she looked for him, glancing into every ravine and hollow, and neglecting no thicket or clump of bushes that she passed. She believed that she would know him if she saw but the edge of his coat or his hand.

At last she reached the fringe of the battlefield. The fallen forms were fewer and the ground less torn by the tramplings of men and horses and the wheels of guns, though the storm had passed, leaving its track of ruin. Here, too, were burned spots, the grass still smouldering and sending up tiny sparks, a tree or two twisted out of shape and half-consumed by flames; a broken cannon, emblem of destruction, lying wheelless on the ground. Lucia looked back toward the more populous field of the fallen and saw there the dim lights still moving, but decreasing now as the night waned. Low, blurred sounds came to her ears. As for herself, she stood in the darkness, silvered dimly by a faint moonlight, a tall, lithe young figure, self-reliant, unafraid.

She began now to search every hollow, to look among the bushes and the ravines. She had heard from men of his own company that he was missing, and she would not turn back while he was unfound. It was for this that she had come, and he would need her.

She was on the farthest rim of the battlefield, where the lights when she looked back were almost lost, and it seemed to be enclosed wholly by the darkness and the vapours. No voice came from it, but in the forest before her were new sounds—a curious tread as of many men together stepping lightly, the clanging of metal, and now and then a neigh coming faintly. This, she knew, were the brigades and the batteries seeking position in the darkness for a new battle; but she was not afraid.

Lucia Catherwood was not thinking then of the Wilderness nor of the vast tragedy that it held, but of a flight one snowy night from a hostile capital, a flight that was not unhappy because of true companionship. Formed amid hard circumstances, hers was not a character that yielded quickly to sentiment, but when the barriers were broken down she gave much.

She heard a tread in the brushwood. Some horses, saddles on and bridles hanging—their riders lost, she well knew how—galloped near her, looked at her a moment or two with wide eyes, and then passed on. Far to the right she heard a faint cannon shot. If they were going to fight again, why not wait until the next day? It could not be done in all this darkness. A blacker night she had never seen.

She came to a tiny valley, a mere cup in the bleak, red ridges, well set with rich green grass as if more fertile soil had gathered there, but all torn and trampled, showing that one of the fiercest eddies of the battle had centred in this spot. At the very edge lay two horses with their outstretched necks crossed united in death. In the trampled grass lay other dark figures which she could not pass without a shudder.

She paused here a moment because it seemed to be growing darker. The low rumble of thunder from the far western horizon came again, all the more threatening because of its faintness and distance. The lightning gleamed a moment and by its quick flash she saw the one she was seeking.

He lay at the far edge of the little valley where the grass had grown richest and tallest, and he was almost hidden by the long stems. It was his face that she saw first, white and still in the lightning's glare, but she did not believe that he was dead. Ah! that could not happen.

Raising his head in her arms, she rested it upon her knee, moistening his lips with water that she carried in a flask. She was a strong woman, both physically and mentally, far beyond the average of her sex, and now she would not yield to any emotion. No; she would do what it was necessary to do, and not until then would she even put her finger upon his wrist to find if the pulse were still beating.

The wound was on the side of the head, under the hair, and she remembered afterward how glad she was that the scar would always be hidden by the hair. Strong enough to examine the nature of the injury, she judged that it had been done by a fragment of shell, and she believed that the concussion and loss of blood, rather than any fatal wound, had caused Prescott's fall.

As she drew away the hair, washed the wound and bound it up with a strip from her own dress, she was filled with a divine gladness. Not only was she doing that which she wished most to do, but she was making repayment. He would have died there had she not found him, and no one else would have found him in that lone spot.

Not yet did she seek to move him or to bring help. She would have him to herself for awhile—would watch over him like a mother, and she could do as much as any surgeon. She was glad Helen and the other woman had turned aside, for she alone had found him. No one else could claim a share in saving him. He was for the time hers and hers alone, and in this she rejoiced.

As his pulse was growing stronger she knew that he would live. No doubt of it now occurred to her mind, and she was still happy. The battle of the day that was gone and of the day that was to come, and all the thousands, the living and the fallen, were alike forgotten. She remembered only him.

Again came the tramp of riderless horses, and for a moment she was in dread—not for herself, but for him—but again they turned and passed her by. When the low, threatening note of the cannon shot came once more she trembled lest the battle be renewed in the darkness and surge over this spot; but silence only followed the report. Misty forms filed past in the thicket. They were in blue, a regiment of her own people passing in the darkness. She crouched low in the grass, holding his head upon her knees, hiding again, not for herself, but for him. She would not have him a prisoner, but preferred to become one herself, and cared nothing for it. This was repayment. His pulse was growing stronger and stronger and he uttered half-spoken words while his head moved slightly upon her knees.

She did not know how long she had been there, and she looked back again toward the field. It was now wholly in darkness, then lighted dimly by a fitful flash of lightning. She must carry him to shelter, and without taking thought, she tried to lift him in her arms. He was heavy, lying like lead, and she put him down again, but very softly. She must go for help. Then she heard once more the tread of those riderless horses and feared for him. She could not leave him there alone. She made a mighty effort, lifted him in her arms, and staggered toward the battlefield.



CHAPTER XX

THE SECRETARY LOOKS ON

The old house in the woods which still lay within the Confederate lines became a hospital before morning, and when General Wood turned away from it he beheld a woman staggering through the darkness, carrying a strange burden. It was Lucia Catherwood, and when she came nearer he knew that the burden was a man. He saw then that the girl's expression was one that he had never before seen on the face of woman. As he ran forward she gasped:

"Take him; it is Captain Prescott!"

Full of wonder, but with too much delicacy under his rough exterior to ask questions, the mountaineer lifted Prescott in his arms and carried him into the house, where he was placed on the bed beside Harley, who was unconscious, too. Lucia Catherwood followed alone. She had been borne up by the impulse of excessive emotion, but she was exhausted now by her mighty effort. She thought she was going to faint—she who had never fainted in her life—and leaned against the outside wall of the house, dizzy and trembling. Black shadows, not those of the night, floated before her eyes, and the house moved away; but she recovered herself in a few moments and went in.

Improvised beds and cots were in every room, and many of the wounded lay on the floor, too. Mixed with them were some in blue just as on the other side of the battlefield were some in gray mixed with the blue. There was a powerful odour of drugs, of antiseptics, and Helen and Mrs. Markham were tearing cloth into strips.

Prescott lay a long time awaiting his turn at the surgeon's hand—so long that it seemed to Lucia Catherwood it would never come; but she stayed by his side and did what she could, though conscious that both Mrs. Markham and Helen were watching her at times with the keenest curiosity, and perhaps a little hostility. She did not wonder at it; her appearance had been so strange, and was still so lacking in explanation, that they could not fail, after the influence of the battlefield itself had somewhat passed, to be curious concerning her. But she added nothing to what she had said, doing her work in silence.

The surgeon came at last and looked at Prescott's head and its bandages. He was a thin man of middle age, and after his examination he nodded in a satisfied way.

"You did this, I suppose," he said to Lucia—it was not the first woman whom he had seen beside a wounded man. When she replied in the affirmative, he added: