This was a two-wheeled farm cart, and it stopped beside the wreck of lilac bushes. An unrecognizable voice was yapping, No Poinsett tactics for the infantry I said no Poinsett tactics introduced in company drill … Laughed. Mr. Fanning went to the head of the steps. Two tramps came out of the gloom, and they had the shine of an oil-cloth shape between them. “It’s—” said Mr. Fanning, sharply, “it’s—” and then they had reached the porch.

Duffey told him, “We have your son, man,” and began to back laboriously up the steps. The girl could make out the figure of Dan Bale at the lower end of the improvised litter; something clicked behind her eyes. Tyler said, Wicks take the company. Let them go into double file Wicks … Now his head had come into the light as the doctor backed through the door, and it was a head like the head of a wounded Confederate, exactly; dry wads of his hair stuck every which way, and the skin seemed transparent under its dirty blonde beard. There was odor, here, putting the reminiscent odor of the vanished wounded to shame.

Doctor Duffey growled, “Where do you want him put?” and when they bent over Tyler, unable to speak, he cried with anger: “Well, say where!” “Upstairs.” Irene found herself going ahead of them and calling, Gretel, Gretel please come at once.

She lit a lamp in the upper hall and pushed open the door of her room. He was here before, she told herself, and it must be the best place for him now. “In here, please. I’ll turn back the covers.” They laid the lengthy weight of wet cloth on the unstained sheet and Duffey said, “Now,” and “Easy,” and worked a wide board out from underneath. Tyler screamed.

His father had a handkerchief, and was wiping froth from the plump-eyed face. He quavered, “You are at home, my son. Home. Good God,” he sobbed, “is he out of his mind?”

“Mainly,” Duffey grunted, and stood back, wiping the sweat from his own face. “I’ll look to his wound, and then I must go. Eva’ll be that crazy. There’s other wounded—twenty-five thousand.”

Irene heard Dan Bale going down the stairway, and she had not looked at him since he came inside. “Wait!” she cried, earnestly. And then, “No, no! I mean— Go on. I will get water.” There were other sounds in the house; Gretel downstairs, and Mrs. Fanning awakening and blundering about in her dark room, calling for Bedford, crying, “Have they brought him? Is honey boy here?”