Afterwards, when she drove home with John Abner, she found that, though they had buried the actual Nathan in the churchyard, the legendary Nathan of prayer and sermon still accompanied them. "I wish Father could have heard what they said of him," John Abner remarked, with detached reverence, as he might have spoken of one of the public characters in the Bible. "It would please him to know what they thought of him after he was gone." "Perhaps he does know," Dorinda responded. For a few moments they talked of this; of the way death so often makes you understand people better than life; of the sermon and the flowers, and the general mourning. "Did you see Jacob Moody there?" asked John Abner presently. "He used to work for Father before we moved to Old Farm, and Jacob told me he swam Whippernock River to come to the funeral." Dorinda wiped her eyes. "Things like that would have touched Nathan. I never saw any one get on better with the coloured people. It was because he was so just, I suppose." "Those were Jacob's very words. 'Mr. Nathan was the justest white man I ever saw,' he said. Put back that heavy veil, Dorinda. It is enough to smother you. There now. That's better. Your face looks like the moon when it comes out of a cloud." Dorinda smiled. "Even that old German who has just moved into the Haney place was there. I wonder what he thinks now of Germany? We shan't hear anything about the war after this. I used to tell your father he couldn't have felt more strongly if it had been fought at Old Farm." "I was beginning to get interested myself," John Abner returned. "I'll try to follow it on the map just as he did in the evenings. Well, it will be over before next winter, I reckon." "And all that waste so unnecessary!" Dorinda exclaimed. They were turning in at the gate by the bridge. Straight ahead, she saw the house, with the smoke flying like banners from the chimneys. On the hill beyond, the big pine was dark against the blue and white of the sky. V Although Dorinda would have been astonished had she discovered it, the years after Nathan's death were the richest and happiest of her life. They were years of relentless endeavour, for a world war was fought and won with the help of the farmers; but they were years which rushed over her like weathered leaves in a storm. To the end, the war came no nearer to her than a battle in history. There was none of the flame-like vividness that suffused her mother's memories of the starving years and the burning houses of the Confederacy. Only when she saw victory in terms of crops, not battles, could she feel that she was part of it.