Dan told them, “Do you go down cellar. The firing’s coming nearer, rapidly.” He felt the woman staring at his back, felt the dull fear and increasing trouble of her breathing. He went out into the yard; the light outer door banged on his heel, and now he could see a slow fog of saffron staining the green tops of Oak Ridge. The sun puffed higher, intense and mighty, a desert sun.

Demon was out beyond the chicken-run. He had one of the team safely inside the stable, but the old white mare eluded him. She stood on a rocky knoll, lifting her hoofs one after another, as if the soil were too hot to stand upon. “Demon,” Dan yelled, “go into the house.”

“I got get Pansy,” the negro wailed.

Bale said, “I’ll get her. Mr. Fanning said for you to hurry!” He took the old servant by his shoulders and turned him around, and gave him a slap in the small of his back. Demon scampered toward the back door, his loose clothes bagging around him, his silver poll glistening. “Pincus tied in the bahn!” he howled. “He tied, Mist Dan—”

Bale propped the stable door with a slanted board. He caught up some small stones and sprinted out into the pasture. Pansy tossed her head and whinnied peevishly. He threw a stone: it caught her in the ribs. She turned toward the barn, and the man raced abreast of her, still throwing stones. Stiff-legged, she tried to swing toward the garden but he cut her path. Then she lumbered into the stable. He shut the door and sank the wooden bar into its notch.

The last of the big wagons, a final straggle of blacksmiths’ carts, rumbled hastily toward the village along the Fairfield road. Above the constant crackle of rifle fire, and punctuated by the empty slamming of larger guns, Dan could hear a far-away sound … strange sound which he had never heard before. It was high, windy—it seemed to possess all creation which lay west of those racketing woods.

He went back to the house. Mr. Fanning was pattering from room to room, closing windows, his slippers whispering over the carpets. “You must come into the cellar with us, Daniel.”

“No, I must go home.” He said, “I wish you were all over there instead of here, though the cellar itself is tiny. A brick house would be safer and less apt to be fired.”

Fanning’s unhealthy face at the door. “Merciful Heavens, sir! Do you think there’s a possibility—?”