The leg was hairy and swollen, the part you could see; from knee to crotch it was wound with brown-soaked rags, dirty rags, pieces of torn underwear, part of a muslin curtain, part of a shirt. The odor choked the whole room. “Get water,” Irene said, and then she was on the stairs and looking down at Dan. He stood with his back to her, gazing out through the front door, and when he turned it gave her a shock—she did not know his face, it had not been shaved for four days. There was a bulge of mottled colors on his forehead.

“Well, he’s here,” he said.

She attempted to face the knives in his eyes. He was mud, old mud and new, from head to foot. “You went there,” she told him.

“Wasn’t that what you wanted me to do?” His voice boomed.

“Please. Not—so—loud.”

“Oh,” he said, “it’s the cannon. Everybody talks that way, afterward. One becomes deaf. Can hardly hear you.”

Tyler was making a shrill whine upstairs; he mingled names and incoherencies beyond all reason. Sutton Jones’s killed God damn it, he cried, Andy McBride killed to hell I said’s dead’s said’s lieutenant’s name’s Griffith’s dead let go me let go me let go.

Dan called through it all, “You insisted that I go, didn’t you? I killed a man.” Blindly, she turned and went into the dining room; he followed her. She cried, “That’s right, Gretel—that’s right—build up the fire, we shall need hot water at once.”

A bugle was ringing somewhere not far away.

Bale told her, still speaking far louder than she wanted him to speak, “Did what you demanded that I do.”

She turned. “I am going mad,” she said, rapidly, “going mad with this! With—I cannot talk to you, now. You should know that. He’s suffering so hideously. Oh,” she shrieked, “why won’t you understand?” She flung her hands against her face and felt her head beginning to fly apart.

For a long moment he said nothing. Gretel was making a great fuss in the kitchen, clattering pans and spilling water, and upstairs Tyler hallooed and hallooed … Bale said, more soberly, “Well. Must make certain allowances.”

“Indeed,” she struggled to say.

“Have—you—others here?”

She saw nothing except a gray blur with eyes in it. “Not now. Mrs. Knouse went home this morning, wholly recovered. The rebels carried away their wounded yesterday, and our Eve wounded Unionists were— They are making a hospital of the seminary.”

“We shall talk, later?” He asked it hopelessly. “This is—not a part of—”

“Strange,” she said.

“Do you please tell Doc I’ve gone to my house. If it’s still there. He can drive back to town alone with no trouble.”