were thirsty; clutched
the dipper with burning fingers, drank, with their hollow eyes now on
the girl who held it, now on mere space. Some could not help themselves.
She knelt beside these, raised the head with one hand, put water to the
lips with the other. She gained her mountain steadiness and did well,
crooning directions in her calm, drawling voice. This bucket emptied,
she found where to fill it again, and pursued her task, stepping lightly
between the huddled, painful rows, among the hurrying forms of nurses
and surgeons and coloured helpers.

At the very end of the long lane, she came upon a blanket spread on the
blood-stained floor. On it lay a man, blond and straight, closed eyes
with a line between them, hand across his breast touching his shirt
where it was stiff with dried blood. "Air you thirsty?" began
Christianna, then set the bucket suddenly down.

Allan opened his eyes. "Very thirsty.... I reckon I am light-headed. I'm
not on Thunder Run, am I?"

The frightful day wore on to late afternoon. No guns shook the air in
these hours. Richmond understood that, out beyond the entrenchments,
there was a pause in the storm. McClellan was leaving his own wonderful
earthworks. But would he retreat down the Peninsula by the way he had
come, or would he strike across and down the James to his gunboats by
Westover? The city gathered that General Lee was waiting to find out. In
the meantime the day that was set to the Dead March in "Saul" passed
somehow, in the June heat and the odour of flowers and blood.

Toward five o'clock Judith left the Stonewall Hospital. She had not
quitted it for twenty-four hours, and she came now into the light and
air like a form emerging from Hades, very palely smiling, with the grey
of the underworld, its breath and its terror still about her. There was
hardly yet a consciousness of fatigue. Twelve hours before she had
thought, "If I do not rest a little, I shall fall." But she had not been
able to rest, and the feeling had died. For the last twelve she had
moved like an automaton, swift, sure, without a thought of herself. It
was as though her will stood somewhere far above and swayed her body
like a wand. Even now she was going home, because the will said she
must; must rest two hours, and come back fresher for the night.

As she came out into the golden light, Cleave left the group of young
and old about the door and met her. In the plane along which life now
moved, nothing was