With a flabby hand, the Copperhead brushed some straw from his sleeve. “I’ve been praying,” he said, “but somehow I can’t get right with my soul. And I’ve been upset and sick with my stomach. I—”

He followed Dan across the narrow street and behind the wall. “Sit down,” Bale told him. Quagger slumped upon the ground; his hand gathered a sheaf of grass and clung to it, shaking. He raised his voice against the roar behind them. “You—know about—that letter I wrote to young Fanning?”

Bale thought: This is an hypocrisy I never dreamed …

“Why did you send it, Quagger?”

“I was mad because you pushed me in the bushes. I got to thinking about the Huddlestone boy—I knew you two was in cahoots—and when he started out there that Sunday night, I followed on. I don’t know—I thought maybe it was a militia secret, or something.”

“Well,” Dan said, “it wasn’t.”

Quagger took up the bunch of grass and squeezed off the ripe grain of the heads. “I guess not. Well—I was besides the fence in the dark, and I followed Huddlestone away, and then I thought I’d come back. The Devil had me in his grasp.” He said, “Honest,” and sobbed dryly for awhile. “I kind of figured I’d give you a poke in the face, and cut away, because you had cursed me and slung me in the briars. Then when I looked through the window, the young Missis was with you. Thinks I, that’s better than a clout in the nose! I’ll just—”

He looked up with a fearful, shamed face, and then down again. “Well, Bale, I done you a lot of harm. And the lady. Didn’t I?” His fat chins shook; his voice was fat.

“Did you see anything wrong?”

“Just her being there. It was real late at night.”

Dan said, “She was walking, and hurt herself on some thorns. I was doctoring her in the kitchen.”

“I recollect, now. You had some cloth and stuff. But the Devil was besides me, I tell you. I went back to town and set down, over to Frielings’, and wrote that letter, and sent it to the Junction with Barney Endsor. If I hadn’t been mad clean through I wouldn’t of done it.”

Dan thought, “Here we sit—the world goes apart—here we sit, tugging grass,” and the knowledge of his own vileness sang through his brain … Now there is another part to it: I must get within the National lines. I told her I would, and I must go.