Irene said, “I will tell him,” and then she heard Dan going across the porch and down the steps and away into the wet grass. She felt her feet leaving her; Gretel screamed from the doorway. Irene thought, All the shadows varnished and fleeing fast, and everything gone smooth to the touch … Doctor Duffey said with something of his old kindliness, “There, child. Be taking it easy,” and she looked up into his face, and Gretel’s, and felt water soaking uncomfortably around the drenched collar of her dress. “Said you can drive back alone,” she said, thickly.

Chapter 13

13.

Mrs. Knouse was still awake, and the light from her kitchen showed Dan that his back door was standing wide. He went inside and struck a match. Drawers had been pulled from the built-in cupboard, and knives and forks and napkins were scattered all over the floor. Everywhere were the marks of muddy feet. In the living room it was the same, and in the front parlor and library. Pentland Bale’s desk stood gaping and ravished; letters and books and receipts were inches deep over the carpet. Camp followers, Dan said. Sons of bitches.

Evidently the marauders had been frightened away before they completed their tour of the entire house. The upper rooms were in some disorder, but only the disorder of an army staff compelled to leave in haste, and nothing was disturbed in Dan’s own bedroom. His money was safe enough, all the time, in the belt fastened around his body … Keepsakes. Probably they took silver, and whatever else they wanted.

He stood for awhile with a lighted candle in his hand, gazing at his bed and desk, at the sedate curtains of the corner closet. Monongahela, he thought … maybe some still left in the cellar keg. As he went back down the stairway he could hear footsteps in the path outside. He walked out on the stoop, still holding his candle.

An agonized, tallow face lifted close to the light. “Oh, you are safe,” came Julius Orcutt’s voice, and Dan could see that the lawyer was bareheaded. He carried a huge umbrella. “I feared that you were killed. No one had seen you for days.”

“I’m all right,” Dan said. “Come inside, sir.”

Orcutt crowed, “No, no. I am walking, walking.”

“Where to?”

“It came with all the mail they brought in by wagon today,” Orcutt said, much more rapidly than he was accustomed to speak. “You will understand—I am walking because I cannot endure the house. Mrs. Orcutt has her sister with her … I came in at the gate to see—”

Bale cried, “For God’s sake, what is it?”

“It came in the mail from Hanover Junction. Benjy—” he wallowed over the name somehow. “Vicksburg. They wrote from the hospital where he—”

Dan said, “I guess you mean he is dead, don’t you?”