the other side of the swamp through the water as if he were on dry land she could not have made him hear if she had wished it for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines bending them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom into white waves and the thunder which had been in the distance suddenly broke with a great peal just overhead in a few minutes the rain came but the girl did not mind it she stood looking across the bottom until it came in sheets her to the skin and shutting out everything a few yards away the thunder storm passed but all that night the rain came down and all the next day and when it held up a little in the evening the bottom was a sea the rain had not prevented from going out � he was used to it and he spent most of the day away from home when he returned he brought his mother a few provisions as much meal perhaps as a child might carry and little spent the rest of the evening sitting before the fire silent and motionless a flame burning back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on his brow he was in his uniform which he had put on again the night before as soon as he got home and the steam rose from it as he sat the other clothes were in a bundle on the floor where he had tossed them the evening before he never moved except when his mother now and then spoke and then sat down again as before presently he rose and said he must be going but as he rose to his feet a pain shot through him like a knife everything turned black before him and he staggered and fell full length on the floor he was still on the floor next morning for his mother had not been able to get him to the bed or to leave to get any help but she had made him a and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging fever feeble as she was the sudden demand on her had awakened the old woman s faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible one thing puzzled her in his constantly referred to a and a she knew that he had a of course but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the words so the day little passed and then s delirium still continuing she made out to get to a neighbor s to ask help the neighbor had to go to mrs s as the only place where there was a chance of getting any medicine and it happened that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers on horseback who asked her a few questions they were members of a home and guard just formed and when she left them they had learned her errand fortunately s illness took a better turn next day and by sunset he was free from delirium things had not well over at mills s during these days any more than at mrs s was in a state of mind which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy she set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening for had not mentioned s name she kept his to herself thinking that � thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat her heart was like lead within her but she could not rid herself of the thought of she could have torn it out for hate of herself and to all her mother s questioning glances she turned the face of a for two days she little neither ate nor spoke she watched the opposite hill through the rain which still kept up � something was going on over there but what it was she could not tell at last on the evening of the third day she could stand it no longer and she set out from home to learn something she could not have gone to mrs s even if she had wished to do so for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side and it was over her head in the current she set off therefore up the stream on her own side thinking to learn something up that way she met the woman who had taken the medicine to that evening and she told her all she knew mentioning among other things the men of the guard she had seen s heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat as she was so near she went on up to the cross roads but just as she stepped out into the road before she reached there she came on a small of riding slowly along she stood aside to let them pass but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them they were in long and and she thought they were the guard especially as there was a negro with them who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way her little one thought was of he would be arrested and shot when they questioned her therefore she told them of the roads leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district whilst they were still talking more came around the curve and the next instant was in the midst of a column of cavalry and she knew that they were the she had one moment of terror for herself as the horses trampled around her and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving in her ears but the next moment when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be the 