k
Swamp. If I could cleanse that day, bring it again into line with the
other days of my life, poor and halting though they may have been,
though they may be, if I could make all men say 'His life was a
whole--one life, not two. He had no twin, a disobedient soldier, a liar
and betrayer, as it was said he had.'--If I could do that, Judith! I do
not see how I will do it, and yet it is my intention to do it. That
done, then, darling, darling! I will make true love to you. If it is not
done--but I will not think of that. Only--only--how to do it, how to do
it! That maddens me at times--"

"Is it that? Then we must think of that. They are not all dead who could
tell?--"

"Maury Stafford is not dead."

"Maury Stafford!--What has he to do with it?"

Cleave laughed, a sound sufficiently grim. "What has he not to do with
it?--with that order which he carried from General Jackson to General
Winder, and from General Winder--not, before God! to me! Winder is dead,
and the courier who could have told is dead, and others whom I might
have called are dead--dead, I will avow, because of my choice of action,
though still--given that false order--I justify that choice! And now we
hear that Major Stafford was among those taken prisoner at Sharpsburg."

Judith stood upright, her hand at her breast, her eyes narrowed. "Until
this hour I never knew the name of that officer. I never thought to ask.
I never thought of the mistake lying there. The mistake! All these
months I have thought of it as a mistake--as one of those
misunderstandings, mishappenings, accidental, incomprehensible, that
wound and blister human life! I never saw it in a lightning flash for
what it was till now!"

She looked about her, still with an intent and narrowed gaze. "The lone
tree hill. It is a good place to see it from. There is nothing to be
done but to join this day to a day last June--the day of Port Republic."
Raising her hands she pressed them to her eyes as though to shut out a
veritable lightning glare, then dropped them. She stood very straight,
young, slender, finely and strongly fibred. "He said he would do the
worst he could, and he has done it. And I said, 'At your peril!' and at
his peril it shall be! And the harm that he has done, he shall undo it!"
She turned. "Richard! he shall undo it."

Cleave stood beside her. "Love, love! how beautiful the light is over
Greenwood! I thought, sitting here, 'I will not wait for the sunshine; I
will go whi