glorious, maybe, but
it was just as necessary as being a general. An' that he had always
loved Allan an' always would. An' he told us about something Allan did
at McDowell and then again at Kernstown--an' Sairy cried an' so did I--"

Sairy folded her work. "I wasn't crying so much for Allan--"

"An' then he asked for a drink of water 'n we talked a little about the
crops, 'n he went down the mountain. An' Sairy an' I don't believe he
did it."

The doctor drew his hand downward over mouth and white beard. "Well,
Mrs. Cole, I don't either. The decisions of courts and judges don't
always decide. There's always a chance of an important witness called
Truth having been absent. I didn't see Richard Cleave but once while he
was at Three Oaks. He looked and acted then just like Richard
Cleave,--only older and graver. It was beautiful to see him and his
mother together." The doctor rose. "But I reckon it's as Tom says and he
couldn't stand it, and has gone where he doesn't hear 'the army--the
army--the army'--all day long. Mrs. Cleave hasn't said anything, and I
wouldn't ask. The last time I saw her--and I think he had just gone--she
looked like a woman a great artist might have met in a dream."

The doctor gazed out over the autumn sea of mountains and up at the pure
serene of the heavens, and then at his old, patient white horse with the
saddle bags across the saddle. "Mrs. Cole, all you've got to do is to
keep Tom from getting excited. I'll be back this way the first of the
week and I'll stop again--"

Tom cleared his throat. "I don't know when Sairy an' me can pay you,
doctor. I never realized till it came how war stops business. I'd about
as well be keeping toll gate in the desert of Sahary."

"I'm not doing it for pay," said the doctor. "It's just the place to
stop and rest and talk, and as for giving you a bit of opinion and
advice, Lord! I'm not so poor that I can't do that. If you want to give
me something in return I certainly could use three pounds of dried
apples."

The doctor rode on down the mountain. Tom and Sairy had a frugal dinner.
Then the former lay down to take the prescribed nap, and the latter set
her washtub on a box in the yard beneath the peach trees. Tom didn't
sleep long; he said every time he was about to drop off he thought he
heard wheels. He came back to his split-bottomed chair on the porch, the
tobacco box for the toll, the tin box with Allan's letters, and the view
across the china aste