a, and the breathless horror in the General's voice passed
into my own mind as I looked. There she was, in her poke bonnet and her
black silk mantle, walking primly at the straggling end of the
procession, among a crowd of hooting small boys and gaping negroes. Her
eyes, very wide and bright, like the eyes of one who is mentally
deranged, were fixed straight ahead, over the lines of men marching in
front of her, on the blue sky above the church steeples. Under her poke
bonnet I saw her meekly parted hair and her faded cheeks, flushed now
with a hectic colour. In one neatly gloved hand her silk skirt was held
primly; in the other she carried a little white silk flag, on which the
staring gold letters were lost in the rippling folds. With her eyes on
the sky and her feet in the dust, she marched, a prim, ladylike figure,
an inspired spinster, oblivious alike of the hooting small boys and the
half-compassionate, half-scoffing gazers upon the pavement.

"She's crazy, Ben," said the General, and his voice broke with a sob.

For a minute, as dazed as he, I stared blankly at the little figure with
the white flag. Then bewilderment gave place before the call to action,
and it seemed to me that I saw Sally there in Miss Matoaca, as I had
seen her in the rising moon over the clipped yew, and in the whirlpool
of the stock market. Leaving my place at the General's side, I descended
the steps at a bound, and made my way through the jostling, noisy crowd
to the little lady in its midst.

"Miss Matoaca!" I said.

For the first time her eyes left the sky, and as she looked down, the
consciousness of her situation entered into her strained bright eyes.
Her composure was lost in a birdlike, palpitating movement of terror.

"I--I am going as far as the Square, Mr. Starr," she replied, as if she
were repeating by rote a phrase in a strange tongue.

At my approach the ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of her
helplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm,
my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped from
exhaustion, I took it, with the banner, into my own.

"Then I'll go with you, Miss Matoaca," I responded.

We started on, took a few measured paces in the line of march, and then
her strength failing her, she sank back, with a pathetic moan of
weariness, into my arms. Lifting her like a child I carried her out of
the street and up the steps into the General's office. Turning at a
t