s, and the reaction from her terrible fear left her with a sudden
tremor in her heart. As she walked she leaned heavily upon Mammy Riah, and
her colour came and went in quick flashes. The heat had entered into her
brain and with it the memory of open wounds and the red hands of surgeons.
Reaching the house at last, she flung herself all dressed upon the bed and
fell into a sleep that was filled with changing dreams.

At midnight she cried out in agony, believing herself to be still in the
street. When Mammy Riah bent over her she did not know her, but held out
shaking hands and asked for her mother, calling the name aloud in the
silent house, deserted for the sake of the hospitals lower down. She was
walking again on and on over the hot bricks, and the deep wounds were
opening before her eyes while the surgeons went by with dripping hands.
Once she started up and cried out that the terrible blue sky was crushing
her down to the pavement which burned her feet. Then the odour of the
magnolia filled her nostrils, and she talked of the scorching dust, of the
noise that would not stop, and of the feeble breeze that blew toward her
from the river. All night she wandered back and forth in the broad glare of
the noon, and all night Mammy Riah passed from the clinging hands to the
window where she looked for help in the empty street. And then, as the gray
dawn broke, Virginia put her simple services by, and spoke in a clear
voice.

"Oh, how lovely," she said, as if well pleased. A moment more and she lay
smiling like a child, her chin pressed deep in her open palm.

* * * * *

In the full sunrise a physician, who had run in at the old woman's cry,
came from the house and stopped bareheaded in the breathless heat. For a
moment he stared over the moving city and then up into the cloudless blue
of the sky.

"God damn war!" he said suddenly, and went back to his knife.

IX

THE MONTJOY BLOOD AGAIN

A month later Dan heard of Virginia's death when, at the end of the Seven
Days, he was brought wounded into Richmond. As he lay upon church cushions
on the floor of an old warehouse on Main Street, with Big Abel shaking a
tattered palm-leaf fan at his side, a cavalryman came up to him and held
out a hand that trembled slightly from fatigue.

"I heard you were here. Can I do anything for you, Beau?" he asked.

For an instant Dan hesitated; then the other smiled, and he recognized Jack
Morso