A woman with no hat or bonnet, a little woman, was walking slowly up and down in front of the house. Eva cried, “Syrena! Adam’s drove out to the Culp place, and he got caught by all those soldiers being in the way! He’ll be cursing something terrible, and I’m frightened to death. They’re still shooting, out by the cemetery.”

Mrs. Huddlestone had a darning-ball in her hands, she kept twisting it around and of course did not know that she had it. She nodded at Eva, with a plaintive smile half seen through the dusk. “I kept thinking maybe Lijy would be with our soldiers,” she explained, “so I come out to look, but I couldn’t see him at all. The Enemies come down the street; they liked to knocked me over. Soon as the shooting stopped I come out again. But I couldn’t see him anywhere. I’ll be glad when I know just where he’s at, and make sure he hain’t been taken to a prison pen by The Enemies.”

They went into the house, and Eva Duffey made tea; they both wept as they drank it, and in the gloom the carriage house looked horrid and empty without the back of the carryall sticking out … Ragged men skulked up to the door and asked for a little sugar or a little this-and-that. Many of them were heathenish and menacing. At last the doctor’s wife barred all her doors and dragged chairs against them, and wedged the chairs underneath the doorknobs. Mrs. Huddlestone stayed all night; neither of them slept well; there were shots and noises all the time, and men singing. God knew why they should wish to sing.

Chapter 8

8.

The Second Corps had reached Sangster’s Station before Tyler Fanning caught up with his regiment. Afterward, he remembered Sangster’s Station chiefly because it was the place where a pretty girl with a soiled green apron was picking flowers in her yard; she had a willow basket half full of late roses, and she refused to look at the marching troops. The men called, Hello, sissy—how about a posy? Pshaw, Dobbs, she won’t give you none; she’s picking those for the Secesh … Centreville. Eternally he was ill, and he rode for two hours in a burden wagon, by order of the colonel … head ached, and loose boards in the wagon kept chirping as they rubbed together, and the driver was talking to a sutler about the land his brother had bought in Iowa. The land was inside the bend of a river, and no cyclone could strike it there.