ood! They have sent in
quantities of bar soap--and we needed it more than almost anything!--and
candles, and coarse towelling, and meal and bacon--and hard enough to
spare I don't doubt it all is! And look here, Cousin Cary!" She
indicated a pair of crutches, worn smooth with use. To one a slip of
paper was tied with a thread. Her kinsman bent forward and read it: "_I
kin mannedge with a stick_."

Judith returned, in her last year's muslin, soft and full, in the shady
Eugenie hat which had been sent her from Paris two years ago. It went
well with the oval face, the heavy bands of soft dark hair, the mouth of
sweetness and strength, the grave and beautiful eyes. Father and
daughter, out they stepped into the golden, late afternoon.

Main Street was crowded. A battery, four guns, each with six horses,
came up it with a heavy and jarring sound over the cobblestones. Behind
rode a squad or two of troopers. The people on the sidewalk called to
the cannoneers cheerful greetings and inquiries, and the cannoneers and
the troopers returned them in kind. The whole rumbled and clattered by,
then turned into Ninth Street. "Ordered out on Mechanicsville
pike--that's all they know," said a man.

The two Carys, freeing themselves from the throng, mounted toward the
Capitol Square, entered it, and walked slowly through the terraced,
green, and leafy place. There was passing and repassing, but on the
whole the place was quiet. "I return to the lines to-morrow," said
Warwick Cary. "The battle cannot be long postponed. I know that you will
not repeat what I say, and so I tell you that I am sure General Jackson
is on his way from the Valley. Any moment he may arrive."

"And then there will be terrible fighting?"

"Yes; terrible fighting--Look at the squirrels on the grass!"

As always in the square, there were squirrels in the great old trees,
and on the ground below, and as always there were negro nurses, bright
turbaned, aproned, ample formed, and capable. With them were their
charges, in perambulators, or, if older, flitting like white butterflies
over the slopes of grass. A child of three, in her hand a nut for the
squirrel, started to cross the path, tripped and fell. General Cary
picked her up, and, kneeling, brushed the dust from her frock, wooing
her to smiles with a face and voice there was no resisting. She
presently fell in love with the stars on his collar, then transferred
her affection to his sword hilt. Her mammy came