ing the street with a ceaseless murmur and the
blur of many colours.

And again the crowd would part suddenly to make way for a battalion
marching to the front, or for a single soldier riding, with muffled drums,
to his grave in Hollywood. The quick step or the slow gait of the riderless
horse; the wild cheers or the silence on the pavement; the "Bonnie Blue
Flag" or the funeral dirge before the coffin; the eager faces of men
walking to where death was or the fallen ones of those who came back with
the dead; the bold flags taking the wind like sails or the banners furled
with crepe as they drooped forward--there was not a day when these things
did not go by near together. To Virginia, sitting at her window, it was as
if life and death walked on within each other's shadow.

Then came the terrible days when the city saw McClellan sweeping toward it
from the Chickahominy, when senators and clergymen gathered with the slaves
to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where
is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt
none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in
her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the God of battles--sooner
or later he would declare for the Confederacy and until then--well, there
was always General Lee to stand between. Her chief regret was that the
lines had closed and her mother could not come to her as she had promised.

In the intense heat that hung above the town she sat at her southern
window, where the river breeze blew across the garden, and watched placidly
the palm-leaf fan which Mammy Riah waved before her face. The magnolia tree
had flowered in great white blossoms, and the heavy perfume mingled in
Virginia's thoughts with the yellow sunshine, the fretful clamour, and the
hot dust of the city. When at the end of May a rain storm burst overhead
and sent the wide white petals to the earth, it was almost a relief to see
them go. But by the morrow new ones had opened, and the perfume she had
sickened of still floated from the garden.

That afternoon the sound of the guns rolled up the Williamsburg road, and
in the streets men shouted hoarsely of an engagement with the enemy at
Seven Pines. With the noise Virginia thrilled to her first feeling of
danger, starting from a repose which, in its unconsciousness, had been as
profound as sleep. The horror of war rushed in upon her at the moment, and
with a cry