He bent down. There was a scuffling sound in the kitchen; they broke apart. Demon scraped past the door. He had a thick book he had brought from the little shed which was his. They heard him go creeping fearfully down the cellar stairs, murmuring some few words to himself, over and over.

Irene stifled a sob. “Demon has his Bible. He cannot read, but he owns a Bible; now it is a refuge for him.”

“He is more fortunate than we,” Dan said. The windows jiggled; it seemed that boards in the floor were spreading and quivering with each fresh explosion.

The woman pressed her lips against his mouth, against his chin, and dragging down into the hollow of his throat. “I have brought this upon us,” she whispered with full belief. “Dan, I have. By my—selfishness. It is some kind of judgment—”

He growled, “Oh, stop saying that!” Her eyes held his for a moment; they were set and dry and devoid of any expression; then she picked up a book, a newspaper and a mending basket from the table, and went out into the rear hallway. She descended the steep stairs in front of Bale, and she did not look at him again. Mr. Fanning was seated on the couch beside his wife; her bulk sagged deep in the creaking sofa springs. The man gazed up as Dan placed the pillows beside him. Candlelight gave a false color to his face.

“Did you see the dog, Daniel?”

“Nowhere. Isn’t he—?”

“He scampered out, some time ago.”

“I’ll shut him up if I see him,” Bale said. “Goodbye.” The mutter of uneven firing rose into a stormy pulsation, without the barest second of silence in which no report was echoing. Dan saw Irene’s hair, froth of old gold; it appeared finer and silkier than ever he had seen it before … Goodbye, the voices ached. Take care, take care.

He felt the doors all fastened on the inside. He crawled out of a window, and dropped to the ground a few feet below. The nervousness of musketry ran behind Oak Ridge, north across the railroad cut and seemingly as far as Oak Hill. Cybo was nowhere in sight. A few chickens still scratched industriously beneath the gaunt plum trees, but most of the flock had been driven to shelter by the sound of battle. A shell came hissing from the west; you could hear the whirring gush of its propulsion, and half see the quick cleavage of the air. Then it burst in a fan of spraying white feathers, near the Johnson house at the ridge’s crest.