Dan’s gone back to where Adam is, out where they got the wounded. He says it’s along Rock Creek, and he’ll bring Tyler home as soon as ever he can. Well, I don’t know, but he thinks they can do it. They’ve got so many thousands of wounded, and he guesses nobody will make inquiry if they kind of carry him off quietly. He says old Salt ran away and smashed the carryall to smithereens when all those cannon were shooting on Friday, but he didn’t break a leg and now they’ve got him safe over at the George Spangler place. I ‘spect they’ll be coming home most any time, and you folks mustn’t worry but only trust in Divine Goodness.

Let her call it Divine Goodness. Call it whatever she pleases … Irene was placing Chopin on the heap of music, when the door of the room squeaked open.

It was her father-in-law; he wore his night-cap and dressing-gown, and his face showed the pale, relieved looseness which it had shown ever since Mrs. Duffey’s visit. He whispered, “I heard music.”

“Oh,” she said. “I was just playing.”

“Aren’t you too worn out, daughter?”

“I only thought I’d—”

He went over to the window and peered through the clammy dusk. “Mother is resting well, but I could not sleep. I heard wheels go past some time ago.”

“It was only an army wagon.”

“They’re finding Confederate wounded,” he said. “More of them. Demon says the soldiers are finding them everywhere, in barns and fence corners. They were compelled to leave many behind. The Nationals have gone in pursuit.”

Again she said, Yes, and went on turning the music with her china hands.

“You used to play a few hymns, my girl. Mother enjoyed those … I wish Tyler were more concerned with spiritual matters. Perhaps he will grow that way.” The house remained quiet and pained, as they talked: it would be haunted, there would be an evanescent suffering about it, to the days of its demolition.

Irene said, “If you wish me to play a hymn—” She began, soberly, From Greenland’s icy mountains … She was amazed at her consent to play it. She thought, Maybe I shall become worthy of playing his, in future years. The noise of her own unalterable damnation whistled in her mind; far beyond, she heard the moderate little hammers falling against their tuned wire.

Bedford Fanning interrupted, “There is something coming up our lane. It looks—” Then they both went to the front door and out upon the porch. Straw was scattered all over the dooryard, and the house lights touched wet canteens and abandoned muskets in the grass. The black carcass of a dead mule was inflated and grotesque, half buried among the unblossomed phlox.