They only waited for the stage to come in. From the carriage, drawn up near the post-office, they watched it rumble up, within its depths a hurt soldier or two and the usual party of refugeeing women and children. The jaded horses stopped before the post-office; the driver climbed down with the mail-bag, all the town came hurrying. A man standing on a box, beneath the bulletin board, began to read in a loud voice from an unfolded paper: “Cavalry encounters along the Rapidan—General Lee in Richmond conferring with the President—Longstreet’s corps taking train at Louisa Court-House. Destination presumably Tennessee.—_Cumberland Gap. Tennessee. September ninth. To-day General Frazer, surrounded and cut off by superior force of enemy, surrendered with two thousand men_—” The Three Oaks’ carriage went heavily homeward, up and over the long hills. A light from the west was on the Blue Ridge, the sky clear, the winds laid. At last they saw the home hill, and the three giant oaks. For a long time Miriam kept awake, lying in her narrow bed, her head on her mother’s breast, but at last her eyes closed. Presently she was asleep, breathing quietly. Margaret, for the child’s more easy lying, slipped her arm from beneath her, then waited until, with a little sigh, she settled more deeply among the pillows, then rose, waited another moment, and stepped lightly from the room. The hall window showed a sky yet red from the sunset. Across was the room that since boyhood had been Richard’s. The mother entered it, closed the door, and moving to an old, leather-covered couch, lay upon it face downward. Outside the dusk closed in; the stars peered through the branches of the poplar without the window. Margaret rose, stood for a moment looking at the sword slung above the mantel, then quit the room, and going downstairs, ate her slender supper while Mahalah discoursed of a ghost the negroes had seen the night before. It had been a frightful ghost—“Er ha’nt ez tall ez dat ar cedar ob Lebanon, an er part grey an’ er part white an’ er part black! An’ it hadn’t no mo’ _touch_ to hit den de air has, an’ whar de eyes was was lak two candles what de wind’s blowin’, and it kept er-cryin’ lak somebody in de mountains—_wooh!—wooh!—wooh!_—No, ’m, Miss Margaret! hit wa’n’t ’magination. What we gwine ’magine for, when ever’body could see hit wif their own two eyes?”