n
shone there through the window and fell upon them.

"How quiet the camp is!" said Mrs. Markham after awhile. "Surely the
army sleeps late. I don't hear any voices or anything moving."

"No," said Helen.

"No, not a thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

"Eh?" cried Harley.

His military instinct leaped up. Silence where noise has been is
ominous.

"Helen," he said, "go to the window, will you?"

"No. I'll go," said Mrs. Markham, and she ran to the window, where she
uttered a cry of surprise.

"Why, there is nothing here!" she exclaimed. "There are no tents, no
guns, no soldiers! Everything is gone! What does it mean?"

The answer was ready.

From afar in the forest, low down under the horizon's rim, came the
sullen note of a great gun--a dull, sinister sound that seemed to roll
across the Wilderness and hang over the log house and those within it.

Harley threw himself on the bed with a groan of grief and rage.

"Oh, God," he cried, "that I should be tied here on such a day!"

Helen ran to the window but saw nothing--only the waving grass, the
somber forest and the blue skies and golden sunshine above. The echo of
the cannon shot died and again there was silence, but only for a moment.
The sinister note swelled up again from the point under the horizon's
rim far off there to the left, and it was followed by another, and more
and more, until they blended into one deep and sullen roar.

Unconsciously Constance Markham, the cynical, the worldly and the
self-possessed, seized Helen Harley's hand in hers.

"The battle!" she cried. "It is the battle!"

"Yes," said Helen; "I knew that it was coming."

"Ah, our poor soldiers!"

"I pity those of both sides."

"And so do I. I did not mean it that way."

The servant was cowering in a corner of the room. Harley sprang to his
feet and stood, staggering.

"I must be at the window!" he said.

Helen darted to his support.

"But your wounds," she said. "You must think of them!"

"I tell you I shall stay at the window!" he exclaimed with energy. "If I
cannot fight, I must see!"

She knew the tone that would endure no denial, and they helped him to
the window, where they propped him in a chair with his eyes to the
eastern forest. The glow of battle came upon his face and rested there.

"Listen!" he cried. "Don't you hear that music? It's the big guns, not
less than twenty. You cannot hear the rifles from here. Ah if I were
only there!"

The three looked con