“Listen—” drawled the brown-eyed man. His face was smooth-shaven and tanned as honey; a rusty bandage was wrapped around his right shoulder. He looked bitterly at the minister. “Your folks are doing the same sin and doing it just as hard as us. Look at those bullet marks on the shed, if you don’t believe—”

“No,” he insisted, “not the same sin. ‘But these have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the bonds.’”

The soldier swore. With his unwounded arm he hitched himself forward, and propped the rifle barrel higher. “That’s Old Testament, and you’re talking about the Right of Secession. Oh, yes, you are—”

“‘Wherefore,’” quoted Simon Solt, earnestly, “‘a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities.’”

The other Confederate said, “Aw, poop.” His gun slammed. “You high-tail it off with yore fine talk. Wawl don’t want no more.”

“Shut up, Dart,” muttered the younger man. He nodded at the minister. “My pappy was a church follower, too. I had to read the Word till I was black in the face. Seems like this is somewhere thereabouts: ‘Go ye up on her walls, and destroy, for the houses of Israel and Judah have dealt mighty mean to me, saith the Lord.’”

Reverend Solt shook his head, and the air was creasing close above him … “That is Jeremiah, but you have not spoke it right.”

“It’s right enough for me. Now let us alone, and scoot out of here before Elijah or somebody comes to fetch you in a pillar of fire by day or—” Something went put. He said, hoarsely, Nuhh, and the burned hands slid down from his gun … his head cocked forward. The other soldier rose suddenly on his knees. “Lane!” he cried. “Hi thar, Lane!” The limp head tumbled against the bottom runner of the fence, and the rifle clattered loose.

They dragged him into the shelter of the woodshed, his boots making furrows through the green garden. His face had a little velvet hole close beside the left eye, and a drop of red wax slid down from it. “Sealed,” Reverend Solt whispered.

The dusty-bearded survivor raised up on his haunches. “I reckon yore glad, you Yankee psalm-shouter! Lane had two little gals to home.”