at to do."

Halleck telegraphed to fall back to the fortifications of Alexandria and
Washington.

CHAPTER XLI

THE TOLLGATE

On Thunder Run Mountain faint reds and yellows were beginning to show in
the maple leaves, while the gum trees dwelling in the hollows had a
deeper tinge of crimson. But the mass of the forest was yet green. The
September sun was like balm, amber days, at once alert and dream-like.
The September nights were chilly. But the war, that pinched and starved
and took away on all hands, left the forest and the wood for fires. On
Thunder Run the women cut the wood, and the children gathered dead
boughs and pine cones.

The road over the mountain was in a bad condition. It had not been
worked for a year. That mattered the less perhaps, that it was now so
little travelled. All day and every day Tom Cole sat in the sunshine on
the toll gate porch, the box for the toll beside him, and listened for
wheels or horses' hoofs. It was an event now when he could hobble out to
the gate, take the toll and pass the time of day. He grew querulous over
the state of the road. "There'd surely be more travel if 't warn't so
bad! Oh, yes, I know there aren't many left hereabouts to travel, and
what there are, haven't got the means. But there surely would be more
going over the mountain if the road wan't so bad!" He had a touch of
fever, and he babbled about the road all night, and how hard it was not
to see or talk to anybody! He said that he wished that he had died when
he fell out of Nofsinger's hayloft. The first day that he was well
enough to be left, Sairy went round to the Thunder Run women, beginning
with Christianna Maydew's mother. Several days afterward, Tom hobbling
out on the porch was most happily welcomed by the noise of wheels. "Thar
now!" said Sairy, "ain't it a real picnic feeling to get back to
business?" Tom went out to the gate with the tobacco box. A road wagon,
and a sulky and a man on horseback! The old man's eyes glistened.
"Mornin', gentlemen!" "Mornin', Mr. Cole! County's mended your road
fine! Big hole down there filled up and the bridge that was just a
mantrap new floored! The news? Well, Stonewall Jackson's after them!"

But despite the filled-up holes travel was slight, slight! To-day from
dawn until eleven, no one had passed. Tom sat in the sun on the porch,
and the big yellow cat slept beside him, and the china asters bloomed in
the tiny yard. Sairy was drying apples. She had th