Mahalah cleared the table, closed the shutters, and carried the lamp into the wide hall, where she set it on a leaf-table beside her mistress’s workbasket. Then, still muttering of the “ha’nt,” she threw her apron over her head, and departed for the quarter. Margaret mounted the stair and stood listening at Miriam’s half-open door. The girl was sleeping quietly, and the mother, turning, came down again to the hall, and took her low chair beside the table and the basket of lint she was carding. The night was mild and soft, the front door standing open, the scent of the autumn flowers perceptible. Margaret Cleave, sitting carding lint, the lamplight upon her brown hair, her slender hands, the grave beauty of her face,—Margaret Cleave thought of many things. In the midst of her thinking she heard a step upon the gravel before the house. A man mounted the porch steps and came into the light from the open door. He had raised his hand to the knocker when he saw the mistress of the house sitting in the lamplight by the table. Margaret rose and came forward. She saw that it was a soldier, an officer. “Good evening,” she said; then as she came closer,—“One moment!... Major Stafford!” With a gesture for silence she took up the lamp and led the way into the parlour. “My daughter is not well and has fallen asleep. But we can talk here without disturbing her.” “I came,” said Stafford, “hoping to find Colonel Cleave. I have ridden from Lexington to-day. He is not here?” “No.” The two faced each other, her eyes large, enquiring, quietly hostile. Stafford, moving with steadiness upon that changed level, met her gaze with a gaze she could not read. She turned slightly, sank into a great chair, and motioned him to one opposite. He continued to stand, his hand touching the table. There was a bowl of roses on the table, and soft lights and shadows filled the room. “Mrs. Cleave, will you tell me where I may find him?” “No. You must understand that I cannot do that.... We heard that you were in prison.” “I have been in prison since Sharpsburg. Latterly I found a friend and four days ago I was exchanged. I have come straight to Three Oaks.” “Yes? Why?” Stafford walked the length of the room and stood a moment at a window, looking out into the night. He had fought his fight; it was all over and done with. Those last weeks in prison he had known where the victory would fall, and that first night out his mind had parted as finally as was possible with one vast country of his past, a dark country of strain and longing, fierce attraction, fierce repulsion. On the starlit road from Prison X, in the quietude of the earth, victory profound and ultimate had come, soft as down. Before he gathered the berries in the by-road, before the soldiers took him, before Marchmont came, he had touched the larger country.