A momentary vision of nausea came to him of the barren stretch of years at Ideala, when he had believed that all good women shunned him as a drunkard; of his pitiful efforts to make friends with his son’s wife; his avoidance of her social-climber women friends. “No,” he said shortly. “I’ve had no practise, dear. None.” She understood. “I’ll--I’ll make it up to you, Jim!” she whispered tremulously. “All of it, dear man. All the horrid lonely years, and everything. I promise.” Another divine silence, broken only by the mocking-bird among the treetops. “Emily,” he said, “the tide is going to turn in this war. The next move will be the turning-point. And it’ll turn hard. I’ll be in the thickest of it, dear. “But I’ve got a kind of feeling that I’ll get through it safe. Because your love will be taking me through it. And after that--” “I’ll be waiting, Jim,” she said. CHAPTER XXXIII WAR! All day, along the steep banks of Antietam Creek, the battle had roared and bellowed and done its wholesale murdering. All day, that red 17th of September, 1862--“the bloodiest single day’s fighting of the Civil War”--the Army of the Potomac had flung itself in dogged fury upon the V-shaped position of the Confederates on the creek’s farther side. It was the second day of the battle of Antietam; the first day having been consumed in a more or less ineffectual artillery duel, and in maneuvering for positions of strategic advantage. Thanks to his foreknowledge of Lee’s plans--and, incidentally, thanks to Dad and Battle Jimmie--McClellan had been able to take advantage of Lee’s moment of comparative weakness by forcing battle upon him before Stonewall Jackson’s force could return from the raid on Harper’s Ferry. Thanks, also, to a delay that has never been explained, McClellan had held off from the attack long enough to let Jackson’s vanguard of ten thousand men join Lee. Still, the bulk of Jackson’s soldiers--the flower of the Southern host--were still absent when the battle was waged. Jackson, too, whose presence and whose counsels at such a moment would have been worth more than fifty thousand additional men, was still absent at Harper’s Ferry. Lee was thus coerced by McClellan into giving battle, with his ablest leader and his best fighters far away. So much for the historic carelessness of the Confederate major-general, D. H. Hill, in losing an all-important paper on the way from Frederick; a carelessness that did untold harm to his cause; and that perhaps might have done far more had McClellan seized all his opportunities instead of merely part of them. Yet, as historians agree, the finding of the lost paper, and its falling into McClellan’s hands, turned the whole tide of the invasion and changed Lee’s most brilliant campaign into a costly failure. A failure that smote the Confederacy a well-nigh mortal blow on the bare heart.