t on earth's the
matter? Come back in the house; you're gittin' your feet all wet with
the dew.' And she jerked away from me and went on clear around the
house lookin' in every dark place under the trees and the vines and
callin' her boys. And when she got to the front door again, she
stopped and said to me, 'Jane, didn't you hear the foot-steps?' And I
says, 'What foot-steps, Mother' and she says, 'Why, Jonathan and
David's, of course.' Says she, 'I heard 'em comin' up the front walk
jest like I've heard 'em a hundred times before, comin' in from the
field at night.' And she started around the house again, and says she,
'May be they're hidin' out somewhere tryin' to surprise me.'

"Well, it was the longest time before I could persuade Mother to come
in, and all the evenin' she talked about the footsteps and how plain
they sounded, and every now and then she'd go to the door and look and
listen and call their names.

"God only knows what she heard, but the next day we got news of the
fightin' at Shiloh, and David was there with General Johnston, and
Jonathan, he was with Grant."

She turned away, and again there was a long silence. To me who
listened the war was but a story on a printed page, but to her who
told the tale, it was a chapter of life written in tears and blood,
and better for Aunt Jane if the old bayonet had lain forever in the
soil of the far field. But again she took up the story.

"I've heard folks say, child, that the funeral's the saddest thing
about a death; but it's a sadder thing to have a death without a
funeral.

"You ricollect me tellin' you about that picture I saw at Henrietta's,
'The Angelus?' Well, there was another picture I'll never forgit as
long as I live. It was a picture of Rizpah. I reckon you know who
Rizpah was; you ought to know, any how."

Aunt Jane looked inquiringly at me and paused for a reply. Rizpah?
Rizpah? Yes, somewhere I had heard that stately name, but where? Was
it in Greece or Rome or France or Italy? Juliet I knew, and Octavia
and Iphigenia and Aspasia--

Had Rizpah any kinship to these? Aunt Jane's eyes were searching my
face.

"Honey," she said gravely, "you might jest as well own up that you
don't know who Rizpah was. That comes o' parents not makin' their
children read the Scriptures. When I was a child we had to read our
Bibles every Sunday evenin' till pretty near sundown. I can't say we
enjoyed it much, but when we grew up we didn't have to blush for