and this July Richmond was to fall, and lo! she
sat secure on her seven hills and her sons did her honour, and for them
she would have made herself a waste place. She yet toiled and watched,
yet mourned for the dead and hung over the beds of the wounded, and more
and more she wondered whence were to appear the next day's yard of cloth
and measure of flour. But in these days she overlaid her life with
gladness and made her house pleasant for her sons. The service at St.
Paul's this afternoon was one of thankfulness; the hymns rang
triumphantly. There were many soldiers. Two officers came in together.
Judith knew General Lee, but the other?... in a moment she saw that it
was General Jackson. Her heart beat to suffocation. She sank down in the
gold dusk of her corner. "O God, let him see the truth. O God, let him
see the truth--"

Outside, as she went homeward in the red sunset, she paused for a moment
to speak to an old free negro who was begging for alms. She gave him
something, and when he had shambled on she stood still a moment here at
the corner of the street, with her eyes upon the beautiful rosy west.
There was a garden wall behind her and a tall crape myrtle. As she
stood, with the light upon her face, Maury Stafford rode by. He saw her
as she saw him. His brooding face flushed; he made as if to check his
horse, but did not so. He lifted his hat high and rode on, out of the
town, back to the encamped army. Judith had made no answering motion;
she stood with lifted face and unchanged look, the rosy light flooding
her, the rosy tree behind her. When he was gone she shivered a little.
"It is not Happiness that hates; it is Misery," she thought. "When I was
happy I never felt like this. I hate him. He is _glad_ of Richard's
peril."

That night she did not sleep at all but sat bowed together in the
window, her arms about her knees, her forehead upon them, and her dark
hair loose about her. She sat like a sibyl till the dawn, then rose and
bathed and dressed, and was at the hospital earliest of all the workers
of that day. In the evening again, just at dusk, she reentered the room,
and presently again took her seat by the window. The red light of the
camp-fires was beginning to show.

There was a knock at the door. Judith rose and opened to a turbaned
coloured girl. "Yes, Dilsey?"

"Miss Judith, de gin'ral air downstairs. He say, ax you kin he come up
to yo' room?"

"Yes, yes, Dilsey! Tell him to come."

When h