"Now," said Grandmother Willing, "I want to go home." Grandfather Willing pondered. He had been studying a route that he thought they could safely follow. He knew all the byroads and all the farmers' lanes across the fields. "You stay here, mother. I wish you would stay here." Grandmother Willing gave her husband one look, and then lifted her cat, Tiger, into his basket. * * * * * In the mysterious dusky light of the Willing farmhouse, Emmeline and her brother Henry had stood for a long moment in one another's arms. They dared not accept with too much enthusiasm this sudden joy. The rain was beating on the roof and the windows. The delirious mutterings of the other inhabitants of the house had died away. "O Emmeline!" said Henry again. "Little Emmeline, is it you?" "Yes," said Emmeline, with a long sigh, "it is." "How are they at home?" "Mother is well, but Sister Bertha is sick." "When did you come out here?" "On Tuesday." "Where,"--Henry looked about, startled,--"where are grandfather and grandmother?" "I imagine they went to Aunt Sally's." "And you have been here _alone_!" "No." Emmeline laughed feebly. "No, not alone." Henry started again. Over his sister's shoulder he saw a man lying on the floor in the parlor. "There are wounded men in this house!" "Oh, yes!" said Emmeline. "You have been taking care of these men!" "I gave them water and biscuit, and I talked to them." Henry went a step nearer the parlor door. "That man is--is dead, Emmeline! And you've been here alone!" "I wasn't alone," protested Emmeline. Between her and yesterday, even between her and this morning, there was falling a haze, gray and concealing as the low-lying clouds outside. She began to weep. "There was some one here to take care of me. I have been safe all the time. And he is gone away forever!" Henry looked into the parlor and the sitting-room, and then went upstairs. Emmeline heard him exclaim. When he came down again, he went to the kitchen door and looked out. The trampled fields were already sodden. At the foot of the garden was a trench, begun for a well and abandoned. It was not deep, but it was deep enough. There, shrouded in Grandmother Willing's comforters, were laid those who in this house had given their lives for their convictions. One of the Watson boys, coming to see how his neighbors had fared, saved Emmeline a share in the last sad ceremony of battle.