I'd like to see Swallow again. He was so darned sure!"

Wardlow turned up by the noon train, and they worked until dusk, when his
partners left him to secure hands in Pittsburgh, while the good news
spread among the men still at work. Penhallow rode home through the woods
humming his old army songs--a relieved and happy man.

The Doctor waited a half-hour in vain, and after his noonday dinner was
about to go out when Mrs. Penhallow was driven to his door. Somewhat
surprised, he went back with her.

"Sit down," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, for me nothing! I want to talk about my husband. He is ill, I am
sure--he is ill. He eats little, he sleeps badly, he has lost--oh,
altogether lost--his natural gaiety. He hardly speaks at all."

The Doctor was silent.

"Well," she said.

"Can you bear a little frank talk?" he asked.

"Yes--why not?"

"Do you know that he is on the verge of complete financial ruin?"

"What does that matter? I can--I can bear anything--give up anything--"

"You have the woman's--the good woman's--indifference about money. Do you
talk to him about it?"

"No. We get on at once to the causes of trouble--this unrighteous
war--that I can't stand."

"Ah, Mrs. Penhallow, there must be in the North and South many families
divided in opinion; what do you suppose they do? This absolute silence is
fatal. You two are drifting apart--"

"Oh, not that! Surely not that!"

"Yes! The man is worried past endurance. If he really were to fall ill--a
serious typhoid, for instance, the South and your brother and John,
everything would be forgotten--there would be only James Penhallow. It
would be better to talk of the war--to quarrel over it--to make him talk
business--oh, anything rather than to live as you are living. He is not
ill. Go home and comfort him. He needs it. He has become a lonely man,
and it is your fault. He was here to-day in the utmost distress about
you--"

"About me?"

"Yes."

"There is nothing the matter with me!"

"Yes, there is--oh, with both of you. This war will last for years--and
so will you. All I have to say is that my friend, James Penhallow, is
worth all the South, and that soon or late he will stand it no longer and
will go where he ought to be--into the army."

"You are talking nonsense--he will never leave the mills." He had called
up her constant fear.

"It is not nonsense. When he is a broken man and you and he are become
irritable over a war you did