He did not tell her of how Elijah was lying on the floor of the buttery, how he leaned against the door casing, how Fisher carried their muskets across the pasture. The buggy: they rolled it out. They, he said, harnessed the colt. They drove away. Yes, Elijah felt fine … The words were crowding in Dan’s mouth; it seemed difficult to sort them and select the right ones to give to Mrs. Huddlestone, while she stood there spanking her thimble and blinking at him.

“First I heard about it,” she said, “was when the Leen boys come running in the yard—they was trying to find their cat and put her in the woodshed, because The Enemies was coming.” She sat down suddenly in her low, padded rocker. The little yarn balls on its arms danced and trembled. “I just kept sewing—kept cutting out the goods. Seemed as if I had to … I’m real glad about Lijy. Mrs. Endsor come and rapped on the window awhile ago, and she said the rebels was gone.”

He nodded. “I inquired around to make sure. It was possible that the Confederates might have overtaken Elijah, somewhere down the Baltimore Pike. But they didn’t go that way. Likely Hud will turn up in a day or two, unless he and Fisher decide to go south and join with the regular army.”

The woman let her rocker creak for several minutes. “Then I’ll keep right on with the bombazine, so’s I can give her a fit. The Enemies didn’t capture any Gettysburg folks, did they, Daniel?”

“Only John Burns. They locked him up, but someone let him out as soon as the troops left. They’re all over up north, folks say, on the Hunterstown road.”

Again she said, “My.” And then, babbling rapidly, “War is such an awful thing. An awful, awful thing, Daniel. I wish Lijy didn’t think he had to go to it … Let me give you a snack. I feel as if I could eat hearty and give thanks to The Lord, with Lijy safe, and all.”

He tried to excuse himself but she made him take two hermit cookies, from a big blue plate which she brought out of the kitchen. Crumbs surfeited his mouth as he went away through the murk … he and Elijah sat in their secret den behind the rhubarb bed, eating warm hermits, and Elijah running up to the door again and again to ask for more. A dozen years. He could not imagine such armies then, such a cancer of impending battles … He threw the remaining cookie into a forest of bushes; it seemed heartless and wasteful to do so; he walked toward the Diamond. The rain was a steady rustle all around, and the baggy macintosh which had belonged to Pentland Bale, swished and crackled as Dan moved in it.