Aunt Em heard her own voice so seldom that the sound of it now seemed to intoxicate her. “No!” she shouted. “It’s like the Bible. One was taken an’ the other left. It was always Alvy this, an’ Alvy that, nothin’ for any one but Alvy. That was all right; nobody complained: prob’ly he deserved it all; at any rate, we didn’t begrudge him any of it, while he was livin’. But there ought to be a limit somewhere. When a man’s dead, he’s pretty much about on an equality with other dead men, one would think. But it ain’t so. One man get’s hunted after when he’s shot, an’ there’s a hundred dollars for embalmin’ him an’ a journey after him, an’ bringin’ him home, an’ two big funerals, an’ crape for his widow that’d stand by itself. The _other_ man--he can lay where he fell! Them that’s lookin’ for the first one are right close by--it ain’t more’n a few miles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, so Hi Tuckerman tells me, an’ he was all over the ground two years ago--but nobody looks for this other man! Oh, no! Nobody so much as remembers to think of him! They ain’t no hundred dollars, no, not so much as fifty cents, for embalmin’ _him!_ No--_he_ could be shovelled in anywhere, or maybe burned up when the woods got on fire that night, the night of the sixth. They ain’t no funeral for him--no bells tolled--unless it may be a cowbell up in the pasture that he hammered out himself. An’ _his_ widow can go around, week days an’ Sundays, in her old calico dresses. Nobody ever mentions the word ‘mournin’ crape’ to her, or asks her if she’d like to put on black. I s’pose they thought if they gave me the money for some mournin’ I’d buy _candy_ with it instead!” With this climax of flaming sarcasm Aunt Em stopped, her eyes aglow, her thick breast heaving in a flurry of breathlessness. She had never talked so much or so fast before in her life. She swung the empty tin-pail now defiantly at her side to hide the fact that her arms were shaking with excitement. Every instant it looked as if she was going to begin again. Serena had taken the handkerchief down from her eyes and held her arms stiff and straight by her side. Her chin seemed to have grown longer or to be thrust forward more. When she spoke it was in a colder voice--almost mincing in the way it cut off the words. “All this is not my doing,” she said. “I am to blame for nothing of it. As I tried to tell you, I sympathize deeply with your grief. But grief ought to make people at least fair, even if it cannot make them gentle and soften their hearts. I shall trouble you with no more offers of friendship. I--I think I will go back to the house now--to my little girl.” Even as she spoke, there came from the direction of the red barn a shrill, creaking noise which we all knew. At the sound Marcellus and I stood up, and Serena forgot her intention to go away. The barn doors, yelping as they moved on their dry rollers, had been pushed wide open. IV