ed on his heel.

The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point
in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the
other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep 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 rumbling 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, wetting 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 Darby 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 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 pallet, 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 incoherent mutterings, Darby constantly
referred to a furlough and a deserter. She knew that he had a furlough,
of course; but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the
words. So the day passed and then, Darby's delirium still continuing,
she made out to get to a neighbor's to a