The man’s bald head bobbed crazily. “Yes, yes! I don’t blame—” he cried. In the whole of creation, there was nothing but this crunching grind of wheels. “Perhaps even now,” he shouted in Dan’s ear, “I will have Dazzle back. If those thieves had taken him, I’d never—”

“Hud and Fisher must be safe. Did you see them turn off the Fairfield road as you came home?”

“No. I saw nothing. I—”

“If they reached the Baltimore Pike before the rebels, they are safe. The Confederates are moving on Harrisburg; I heard them talking about it. They’re not moving south from here.”

Irene’s shoulders began to sag. She kept staring intently at Dan and at her father-in-law, even though her face was white. “I feel so strange,” Dan heard her say, “as if something inescapable had come to us—a car of war—some—”

He brushed Mr. Fanning aside, and picked the woman up in his arms, and carried her quickly into the house. She did not faint; she still kept looking at him, wide-eyed, and trying to master the jellying of her lips. “Feel so strange,” she said.

“There’s sherry on the top shelf of the cupboard,” Bale told Mr. Fanning. He pushed open the library door and brought the girl inside; he could hear the older man limping out to the kitchen, opening a door, pawing among sacks and bottles.

Dan whispered fiercely: “Dear. Dear. You’ve got to get hold of yourself. You cannot do this. You—”

She nodded. He held her on the smooth cherry-wood settee, with Pentland Bale’s portrait glaring up above. “It was—Tyler’s letter. I feel as if—as—” She sobbed with hot breath, “I don’t love him. Oh, believe me, darling. I never loved him! But I’m sorry, sorry, sorry—” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Mr. Fanning came in with sherry in a Willow cup.

The wagons made all the window glass dance in its tight frames. There were still a few mounted men riding alongside the jumbled train, but the main army had gone around the half-turn, across Stevens Run, far into the quiet nave of Gettysburg. The gate in front of Mrs. Knouse’s home was still fastened by its little wooden block. No rebels had walked in her paths, or dug up her flowers … The mist was thickening into a definite rain; the lines of shambling, stolen horses bowed their heads and quaked on, invading, invading.

Chapter 2

2.

There were three Confederate soldiers standing at the door of the town hall as Julius Orcutt came up the steps. Two of them were privates; they stood on either side of the door, bayonets fixed to their muskets; both men were chewing tobacco. “Just a moment,” their officer said, and two guns lifted as one, narrow bayonets pointing at Orcutt’s middle.