the Martinsburg pike. The infantry followed him,
hurrahing. They tasted to-day the sweets of a patriot soldiery relieving
a patriot town. The guns came thundering through, the horses doing well,
the proud drivers, cannoneers, officers, waving caps and hats, bowing to
half-sobbing hurrahs, thrown kisses, praises, blessings. Ewell's
division poured through--Ewell on the flea-bitten grey, Rifle, swearing
his men forward, pithily answering the happy people, all the while the
church bells clanging. The town was in a clear flame of love,
patriotism, martial spirit, every heart enlarged, every house thrown
open to the wounded whom, grey and blue alike, the grey surgeons were
bringing in.

For fear to keep him, Steve had left his captured horse's back and let
him go loose. Now on foot and limping terribly, trying to look equal
parts fire-eater and woe-begone, he applied to a grey-headed couple in
the dooryard of a small clean home. Would they give a hurt soldier a bed
and something to eat? Why, of course, of course they would! Come right
in! What command?

"The Stonewall Brigade, sir. You see, 'twas this a-way. I was helping
serve a gun, most of the gunners being strewed around dead--and we
infantrymen having to take a hand, and a thirty pound Parrott came and
burst right over us! I was stooping, like this, my thumb on the vent,
like that--and a great piece struck me in the back! I just kin hobble.
Thank you, ma'am! You are better to me than I deserve."

CHAPTER XXIII

MOTHER AND SON

Margaret Cleave drew her arms gently from under the wounded boy she had
been tending. He was asleep; had gone to sleep calling her "Maman" and
babbling of wild-fowl on the bayou. She kissed him lightly on the
forehead "for Will"--Will, somewhere on the Martinsburg pike, battling
in heat and dust, battling for the Confederacy, driving the foe out of
Virginia, back across the Potomac--Will who, little more than a year
ago, had been her "baby," whom she kissed each night when he went to
sleep in his little room next hers at Three Oaks. She straightened
herself and looked around for more work. The large room, the "chamber"
of the old and quiet house in which she and Miriam had stayed on when in
March the army had withdrawn from Winchester, held three wounded. Upon
the four-post bed, between white valance and tester, lay a dying
officer. His wife was with him, and a surgeon, who had found the ball
but could not stop the hemorrhage. A lit