Mrs. Knouse was fastening a sign at her gate—a ragged wafer of cardboard hung from a stretched cord. She had printed the legend with red keel: No Tresspass. She pushed back her sunbonnet and stared belligerently at Dan Bale as he came through his yard. It was well after six o’clock; the sun burned above the church spires and the distant tower of the college, and already its warmth could be felt on the face.

“There’s too many of ’em,” Mrs. Knouse said. “I wouldn’t have a flower left if I let ’em traipse in here after water.”

“Who?”

She nodded toward the long rows of wagons near the seminary. “Them.” Bugles had talked and ordered; hearty streams of cavalry had ridden over the ridge and vanished among the meadows beyond; still the groves twitched with moving men. It seemed wholly senseless for people to engage in any such activity on a morning like this. Farmers would be cradling their grain.

Bale asked the old woman, “Did you hear the shooting?”

She was molded there, a stubborn and unbelieving image with jaw agape.

“Half an hour or so ago,” he told her. “I’ve just inquired of a soldier. He said it was a skirmish out in the picket line: they seem to think there may be fighting close by. You’d better go down cellar if there’s any trouble.”

She echoed, “Trouble, Daniel? A war? Fighting—” He went into his house, leaving her among the shafts of larkspur, bewildered by this incredible idea.

The house had the hollow dampness of a brick house tightly closed for many hours. The Seth Thomas clock and a smaller gilt clock in the library were counting the minutes, stirring their hidden cogs. Dan went out to the kitchen, opened the stove, and arranged a handful of kindlings in the fire-box. Yellow flame hunted deliberately along the resinous splinters, curled and mantled up through the pile. As soon as the fire was burning well, he filled the tea kettle and set it over the open stove-hole. If he intended to shave, he’d best be about it before the day grew warmer.

Something, he thought, must be done with the dead horse. If the troops weren’t going to dispose of it, he would have to secure assistance and haul the thing into a field where it could be burned or buried. A few gallons of coal oil and some dry logs might do the trick. There would be an ungodly odor. Perhaps it wouldn’t take too long to dig a hole. Out west, a dead animal was dragged far on the prairie; the crows and the elements had their skillful, wilderness way in such matters. He thought, “A dead horse lying beside the Chambersburg Pike! No, that would hardly do. The town council will be up in arms if they learn of it.”