She told him “Rebels,” again, and then she whispered, “I never durst. No. No.” At last she sat up in his arms and he let her head lie against his chest, the sunbonnet all askew; he had been the torment of her life with his childhood cats and his pop-guns and currant thievery, but now she was a frightened baby for him to woo and reassure.

“Yore all right, Ma,” the youngest Confederate tried to make her believe.

She said, “No,” with suspicion and then she had a chill, even with the larkspurs withering around her. “Who are these critters, Daniel?” she wanted to know. “Just soldiers.” She choked, and said that she knew, they were rebel soldiers and they must keep away from her well. She knew. She had heard them at the well all night long. They thought she didn’t know, but she did know. The sign, she cried weakly—there was a sign at her gate, and it was not for them to bother a woman when she had no men-folks by her.

They heard someone hurrying through the grass, and when Dan turned he could see Irene Fanning coming across his yard. Her gown was shielded by a great apron which must have belonged to her mother-in-law; her face looked too firm and set, as if the skull were built of limestone under soft skin. She was holding her skirt with both hands as she ran … The old woman moaned in Dan’s arms.

Irene stopped at the fence, lifting one hand to grasp the spear of a picket. “I saw, from the house, and came as quickly as I could. What has happened?”

The two officers had removed their hats. Dan rose; Mrs. Knouse let her head nod limply … yes, she might have been whispering, yes, I reckoned this would come about.

“Nothing’s happened,” he said. “Mrs. Knouse was in her cellar since yesterday morning, that’s all.”

The old woman hissed, They come in my yard anyway.

Irene said, “Bring her over to our house. We must care for her.”

“Why,” he heard himself remonstrating for no reason at all, “she—”

They will take my bulbs.

Mrs. Fanning moistened her lips. You’ve got middling black eyes, Dan thought, and always I believed they were green … The colonel was close beside him, fumbling for a hold on the gingham dummy. “Here,” he drawled, “you come and visit me a spell, Mam, while yo’ neighbor gets over the fence.” Bale swung himself across the spikes. Daniel, Mrs. Knouse kept wailing, I want you should make them come no more to my well, and they have trod my speckle-lilies.