of the brain there
flashed out a picture--the day of the Botetourt Resolutions, winter dusk
after winter sunset and Cleave and himself going homeward over the long
hilltop--with talk, among other things, of visitors at Lauderdale. This
was "the beautiful one." He remembered the lift of Cleave's head and his
voice. Judith's large dark eyes had been raised; transparent, showing
always the soul within as did his own, they now met Allan's. "The 65th,"
she said, "was cut to pieces."

The words, dragged out as they were, left a shocked silence. Here, in
the corner by the stair, the arch of wood partially obscuring the ward,
with the still blue sky and the still brick gables, they seemed for the
moment cut away from the world, met on desert sands to tell and hear a
dreadful thing. "Cut to pieces," breathed Allan. "The 65th cut to
pieces!"

The movement which he made displaced the bandage about his shoulder. She
left the box, kneeled by him and straightened matters, then went back to
her seat. "It was this way," she said,--and told him the story as she
had heard it from her father and from Fauquier Cary. She spoke with
simplicity, in the low, bell-like tone that held the ache of the world.
Allan listened, with his hand over his eyes. His regiment that he
loved!... all the old, familiar faces.

"Yes, he was killed--Hairston Breckinridge was killed, fighting
gallantly. He died, they say, before he knew the trap they were caught
in. And Christianna's father was killed, and others of the Thunder Run
men, and very many from the county and from other counties. I do not
know how many. Fauquier called it slaughter, said no worse thing has
happened to any single command. Richard got what was left back across
the swamp."

Allan groaned. "The 65th! General Jackson himself called it 'the
fighting 65th!' Just a remnant of it left--left of the 65th!"

"Yes. The roll was called, and so many did not answer. They say other
Stonewall regiments wept."

Allan raised himself upon the bench. She started forward. "Don't do
that!" and with her hand pressed him gently down again. "I knew," she
said, "that you were here, and I have heard Richard speak of you and say
how good and likable you were. And I have worked hard all the morning,
and just now I thought, 'I must speak to some one who knows and loves
him or I will die.' And so I came. I knew that the ward might hear of
the 65th any moment now and begin to talk of it, so I was not afraid of
h