win.

Some of the awe that oppressed the two women began to creep over Harley
and to chill the blood in his veins. He had gone through many battles;
he had been with Pickett in that fiery rush up Cemetery Hill in the face
of sixty thousand men and batteries heaped against each other; but there
he was a part of things and all was before him to see and to hear: here
he only sat in the dusk of the smoke and the ashes and the clouds, while
the invisible battle swung to and fro afar. He heard only the beat of
its footsteps as it reeled back and forth, and saw only the mingled
black and fiery mists and vapours of its own making that enclosed it.

The dun clouds were still rolling up from both heavens toward the
zenith, shot now and then with yellow streaks and scarlet gleams.
Sometimes they threw back in a red glare the reflection of the burning
forest, and then again the drifting clouds of smoke and ashes and dust
turned the whole to a solid and dirty brown. It was now more than a
battle to Harley. Within that cloud of smoke and flashing flame the fate
of a nation hung--the South was a nation to him--and before the sun set
the decree might be given. He was filled with woe to be sitting there
looking on at so vast an event. Vain, selfish and superficial, depths in
his nature were touched at last. This was no longer a scene set as at a
theatre, upon which one might fight for the sake of ambition or a
personal glory. Suddenly he sank into insignificance. The fortunes or
the feelings of one man were lost in mightier issues.

"It's coming back!" exclaimed Mrs. Markham.

The battle again approached the old house, the clouds swept up denser
and darker, the tumult of the rifles and the great guns grew louder; the
voices, the cries and the commands were heard again, and the human
figures, distorted and unreal, reappeared against the black or fiery
background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in
which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable
to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and
unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first did not
depart.

"It is all around us," said Mrs. Markham.

Helen looked up and saw that her words were true. The battle now made a
complete circuit of the house, though yet distant, and from every point
came the thunder of the cannon and the rifles, the low and almost
rhythmic tread of great armies in morta