A man with a kinky red beard had ridden into the yard soon after the Nationals retreated through the town; got off, bowed and excused himself, walked through the house and came out on the front porch, tugged at his beard, called to a big soldier whom he designated as Doctor Pell.

“Sir,” Mr. Fanning cried hopelessly, “this is my home—we have been ill and—”

The general nodded. “If you forbid us—” He turned his rusty hat in his hands, and when he looked up at Bedford Fanning there was an accusing gleam in his eyes. “You have relatives with the Northern army? Ah. A son. I beg you to consider … if this were Virginia, and your son lay wounded—” He said, “Thank you. We’re grateful. There are hundreds of wounded hereabouts, and we are compelled to use certain houses for headquarters and others for hospital purposes.”

But, he said, the family might remain if they chose. Already Mrs. Fanning had crept to her room; she lay across the bed, her eyes simmering in tears, her padded hands grasping the quilt. Irene came. Just—let—me—alone—daughter. The turpentine spirits, she begged in a voice out of the grave. Can’t I bring you some wine, mother? No. No. Let me be.

When Mr. Fanning came up, Irene returned to the first floor. She made no explanation of her going, and he did not protest at her mingling with these enemies who began to troop through the rooms and fetch their dreadful luggage inside. Each member of the household had become a separate organism, going a solitary way, eyes veiled, ears deadened to the tiny screech of nerves. Demon stood at the well, drawing pail after pail of water, and explaining to the Confederates about his Freedom Paper. They kept teasing him; many of them were very young.

The woman told the surgeon that she would help, and he nodded as if he had expected nothing else. She wondered in how many other houses he had moved about as he was moving here, whistling soundlessly between his tight lips. Spread a sheet over that table, Keedy, that’ll do well enough … He told her about the bran; hot water, of course; and if there was any milk for milk punch, or any soup— He said little enough, and not once did he thank her or annoy her with fulsome apologies. She was a woman, she was in this place, this was what she should be doing.

Only once when he looked at a steel engraving of Boston Common, which hung in the library, he seemed wistfully human.

“You are from Boston, Madam?”

She said, “Philadelphia.”

“My home is in Roanoke—wife and two children—but I pursued my studies at Cambridge. Harvard, ’fifty-five.”