anyway--en de speckled mule she des laid back
'er years en let fly fer Richmon'. Yes, suh, I ain' never seed sech a mule
es dat. She 'uz des es full er sperit es a colt, en her name wuz Sally."

"The worst of it was after getting here," finished Dan, who had lain
regarding Big Abel with a proud paternal eye, "they kept us trundling round
in that cart for three mortal hours, because they couldn't find a hole to
put us into. An uncovered wagon was just in front of us, filled with poor
fellows who had been half the day in the sweltering heat, and we made the
procession up and down the city, until at last some women rushed up with
their servants and cleared out this warehouse. One was not over sixteen and
as pretty as a picture. 'Don't talk to me about the proper authorities,'
she said, stamping her foot, 'I'll hang the proper authorities when they
turn up--and in the meantime we'll go to work!' By Jove, she was a trump,
that girl! If she didn't save my life, she did still better and saved my
leg."

"Well, I'll try to get you moved by to-morrow," said Jack reassuringly.
"Every home in the city is filled with the wounded, they tell me, but I
know a little woman who had two funerals from her house to-day, so she may
be able to find room for you. This heat is something awful, isn't it?"

"Damnable. I hope, by the way, that Virginia is out of it by now."

Jack flinched as if the words struck him between the eyes. For a moment he
stood staring at the straw pallets along the wall; then he spoke in a queer
voice.

"Yes, Virginia's out of it by now; Virginia's dead, you know."

"Dead!" cried Dan, and raised himself upon his cushion. The room went black
before him, and he steadied himself by clutching at Big Abel's arm. At the
instant the horrors of the battle-field, where he had seen men fall like
grass before the scythe, became as nothing to the death of this one young
girl. He thought of her living beauty, of the bright glow of her flesh, and
it seemed to him that the earth could not hide a thing so fair.

"I left her in Richmond in the spring," explained Jack, gripping himself
hard. "I was off with Stuart, you know, and I thought her mother would get
to her, but she couldn't pass the lines and then the fight came--the one at
Seven Pines and--well, she died and the child with her."

Dan's eyes grew very tender; a look crept into them which only Betty and
his mother had seen there before.

"I would have died for her if I c