n change toward the weary latter day. The women
who nursed the soldiers said that it was lovely outside, and that all
the peach trees were in bloom. "We'll raise you a little higher," they
said, "and you can see for yourself. And look! here is your broth, so
good and strengthening! And did you hear? We won on the Peninsula
to-day!"

At four o'clock Judith Cary gave to another her place beside a typhoid
pallet and came out into the emerald and rose, the freshness and
fragrance of the spring. The Greenwood carriage was waiting. "We'll go,
Isham," said Judith, "by the University for Miss Lucy."

Isham held open the door. "No'm, Miss Judith. Miss Lucy done sont wuhd
dat de ladies'll be cuttin' out nuniforms clean 'twel dark. She say don'
wait fer her--Mrs. Carter'll bring her home."

Judith entered the carriage. An old acquaintance, passing, paused to
speak to her. "Isn't there a greater stir than usual?" she asked.

"Some of General Ewell's men are over from Gordonsville. There goes
General Dick Taylor now--the one in grey and white! He's a son, you
know, of Zachary--Old Rough and Ready. General Jackson, too, has an
officer here to-day, checking the stores that came from Richmond.--How
is it at the hospital?"

"It is very bad," said Judith. "When the bands begin to play I laugh and
cry like all the rest, and I wave and clap my hands, and I would fight
on and on like the rest of you, and I do not see that, given people as
they are, the war could have been avoided, and I would die to win, and I
am, I hope, a patriot--and yet I do not see any sense in it! It hurts me
as I think it may hurt the earth. She would like, I believe, something
better than being a battlefield.--There is music again! Yesterday a man
died, crying for the band to hush. He said it drowned something he
needed to hear."

"Yes, yes," replied her friend, nodding his head. "That is perfectly
true. That is very true, indeed!--That band's coming from the station.
They're looking for a regiment from Richmond.--That's a good band! What
are they playing--?"

"Bright flowers spring from the hero's grave,
The craven knows no rest,--
Thrice cursed the traitor and the knave,
The hero thrice is blessed--"

The Greenwood carriage rolled out of the town into the April country.
The fruit trees were in bloom, the woods feathering green, the quiet and
the golden light inestimable after the moaning wards.