No rebels … Henry Niede felt like a very young man once more, free from the elderly worries and sins which had been crushing him down. “See,” he crowed at his daughter, “there is real soldiers, and not like your Huddlestone who runs away in a buggy and don’t come back yet!” He kicked at Belle’s ribs, and headed toward the One-horn who was straying through a fence-gap into clover. “Donnerwedder holt!” he roared, “Odder Ich farschlock dir der Kup!”

He was pleased enough to reach home safely with his stock, and he did not stop to berate Amelia any more. He drank some coffee, ate a few crullers, and walked in to the village to bargain for harvest help. God began to be good to him at last; in Middle street he met the Brenneman brothers in their wagon. They were trusting, good-natured souls, and they would work for small pay. Henry hurried back home with the pleasant idea growing in his mind that Uncle Otto might have died suddenly during this excessive heat—dead and no bother to anyone, out there beside the well. But a dust cloud, vast and ominous, was pressing north past the Sherfy farm, and Uncle Otto was quite alive, standing out in the road with Amelia and the woman. “Look!” they all cried at Henry as he approached, “and comes thousands of soldiers with horses … They’re ours,” Amelia kept saying bravely to her mother. “Ma, they are blue. They’re our side.” Likely enough, she was imagining that Elijah might be with them.

Chapter 5

5.

It was shortly before this that Doctor Duffey stopped at the Bale house, hoping to snatch a few moments’ rest in what had been a disheartening day. He was losing a tumor case which he had thought to save, and over in Boundary street lay a child with a shattered thigh-bone, for whom he felt that he could not do enough. In such hours the Irish morbidity of his ancestors acted as his curse, even though their mysticism might be a belated blessing.

He found Daniel Bale in his undershirt, covered with sweat, and swinging a scythe through the rank weed patch beside the old stable. The sun was white-hot overhead, and through all its course the temperature had swelled. Only in shadier tangles near the gum tree was there any buzzing of grass insects; yellow dust lay thick and cooked along the Pike, and old Salt waited at the gate with his head hanging low, suffering agonies of flies with scarcely a quiver.

Duffey sat down on the well-curb, groaning softly. “Come over and pump me a drink,” he begged. “It’ll be easier than cutting weeds. This is scarce a day for needless ambition.”