er would come true.
It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erect
and so powerful could fall; nor had he.

She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them. Harley's head swayed
slightly from side to side, and his clothing showed red in the dim
moonlight. Wood held him in the saddle with one hand and guided the two
horses with the other. Both women were white to the lips, but it was
Helen who spoke first.

"I expected you," she said to Wood.

Wood replied that Harley was not hurt save by exhaustion from his
previous wounds. He had come, too, at a critical moment, and his coming
had been worth much to the South. But now he was half unconscious; he
must rest or die. The General spoke in simple words, language that one
would have called dialect, but Helen did not think of those things; his
figure was grander than ever before to her, because, despite the battle,
he had remembered to bring back her brother.

Mrs. Markham was quiet, saying no word, but she went with them to the
house, where Harley was placed on the very bed on which he had slept the
night before. Lucia Catherwood did not turn back, and was left alone on
the field, but she was neither afraid nor lonely. She, too, was looking
for some one--one whom she was in dread lest she find and whom she
wished to find nevertheless. But she had a feeling--how or whence it
came she did not know--that she would find him there. Always while she
helped the others, hour after hour, she looked for him, glancing into
every ravine and hollow, and neglecting no thicket or clump of bushes
that she passed. She believed that she would know him if she saw but the
edge of his coat or his hand.

At last she reached the fringe of the battlefield. The fallen forms were
fewer and the ground less torn by the tramplings of men and horses and
the wheels of guns, though the storm had passed, leaving its track of
ruin. Here, too, were burned spots, the grass still smouldering and
sending up tiny sparks, a tree or two twisted out of shape and
half-consumed by flames; a broken cannon, emblem of destruction, lying
wheelless on the ground. Lucia looked back toward the more populous
field of the fallen and saw there the dim lights still moving, but
decreasing now as the night waned. Low, blurred sounds came to her ears.
As for herself, she stood in the darkness, silvered dimly by a faint
moonlight, a tall, lithe young figure, self-reliant, unafraid.

She began now to search