d graveyard, and the children
gathering flowers. There were the living to be cared for, the many
hungry to be fed. All the town was exalted, devoted, bent on service--a
little city raised suddenly to a mountain platform, set in a strange,
high light, fanned by one of the oldest winds, and doing well with a
clear intensity.

Miriam came and stood beside her mother, leaning her head upon the
other's breast. The two seemed like elder and younger sister, no more.
There was a white jasmine over the porch, in the yard the fireflies were
beginning to sparkle through the dusk. "Dear child, are you very tired?"

"I am not tired at all. That Louisiana boy called me
'Zephine'--'Zephine!' 'Zephine, your eyes are darker, but your lips are
not so red.' He said he kept all my letters over his heart--only he tore
them up before the battle, tore them into little bits and gave them to
the wind, so that if he fell into his hands 'l'ennemi' might not read
them."

"The doctor says that he will do well."

"He is like Will. Oh, mother, I feel ten thousand years old! I feel as
though I had always lived."

"I, too, dear. Always. I have always borne children and they have always
gone forth to war. They say there will be no fighting to-night."

She put her daughter slightly from her and leaned forward, listening.
"That is Richard. His foot strikes that way upon the street."

In the night, in his mother's chamber Cleave waked from three hours of
dreamless sleep. She stood beside him. "My poor, dead man, I hated to
keep my word."

He smiled. "It would have been as hard to wake up at the end of a
week!--Mother, I am so dirty!"

"The servants have brought you plenty of hot water, and we have done the
best we could with your uniform. Here is fresh underwear, and a
beautiful shirt. I went myself down to the officer in charge of captured
stores. He was extremely good and let me have all I wished. Tullius is
here. He came in an hour ago with Dundee. I will send him up. When you
are dressed come into the hall. I will have something there for you to
eat."

Richard drew her hand to his lips. "I wonder who first thought of so
blessed an institution as a mother? Only a mother could have thought of
it, and so there you are again in the circle!"

When he was dressed he found in the wide upper hall without his door,
spread upon a small leaf table, a meal frugal and delicate. A breeze
came through the open window, and with it the scent of jasmine. T