Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations.

Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle.

And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment.

She wanted to laugh at the book, and cry to Jeremiah that this was another of the cryptic inaccuracies with which his text was sown. Behold, he might have said, I will send and take all the families of the south … and bring them against this land. Then it would have made sense. Likely enough the rebel Lee was meant to be Nebuchadrezzar … whole land shall be a desolation. She went out upon the porch again, her mouth and lips as dry as fire-brick, and she strained her eyes into the low storm which drifted across people’s gardens. The sun came through the haze with a queer half light—it was like an eclipse, and you ought to have smoked glass to look through. Not a spear of grass moved, along the whole street; only a few birds kept fluttering nervously in and out among the drooping elms, moving with the uneasy flurry of fright—much extra waving of wings, and whistling noises which they had never made before. Behind them lived the bulging wall of sound.

There existed still the New Testament, in spite of all the discomfort which Jeremiah had given her, so she went inside, and found after a long time that she had been sitting on the carpeted stairs of the hall, reading Luke until Jesus had eaten the pieces of broiled fish and the honeycomb. The doctor did not come back; it was time enough; he should be through with the Culps by now, or with Emmy Funk and her tumor, or whomever he had gone to see. She wanted to stand there in the dim, hot closeness of the little hall and scream, and scream.