Duffey said, “I’m a tired man, Daniel. And getting old.”

He came slowly into the kitchen and sat down on a bench against the wall, wiping at his arms with a tea-towel. The floor swam in dirty water, and the stove reeked furiously with its burden of steaming pans. Diluted blood made strange raspberry whorls in the puddles near the door.

“We should have something to eat,” Dan said.

Duffey blew his nose. “A bite of whiskey wouldn’t hurt me. And I’ve just thought about old Salt—”

“I gave him some water awhile ago. He had a bait of oats I brought from Fannings’ barn.”

The doctor lifted a quart bottle from the table; it was empty; he let it roll across the floor. The rumble of guns drowned his whisper: “Some of our patients were hogs—”

“There’s more in the keg.” Bale raised the trapdoor and crept down into the pit beneath. While he drained whiskey from the Monongahela keg, he could hear Adam Duffey talking in the room above. Talking to himself: it was the first time Dan had ever known the doctor to do it. Artillery made a flat, metallic orchestration of his words; he talked as if he were explaining to another, sterner surgeon who would hold him responsible for all he had failed to do. Sure … would have been glad for a better opportunity. Something like … a young man, and devil a bit of good it did him. The damn ball comminuted the surgical neck of the left humerus, and the coracoid process of the scapula. But there was more awaiting me … just below the clavicle. A better chance … Dan came up with the whiskey and Duffey poured out a full teacup. He drank it, grunted, and coughed heartily when he was done. Some of the whiskey trickled out of his nostrils, and he wiped his face with fingers still stained. He left a smudge on his lip.

He said, “That right eye. You’ll be remembering. He was a howler, and will you blame him?”

“Do you think I am insensate, merely because I say nothing?” Bale barked at him.

Duffey stared with moist, blank gaze. “It must have been a fragment of a bombshell. Evacuated the humors of the eye, as near as I could make out—and the nasal bones were a pretty mess. And the right superior maxilla.”

Dan said, “Look here. You go in the other room and lie down. You’re wholly exhausted.”

“No, for I might be shot in my sleep.”

“It’s safe enough. I looked at the other side of the house: some bullets have struck there, but they are mostly spent and they flatten out on the bricks. I’ll move the big secretary to the head of your sofa, and nothing could strike you.”