* * * * * In the full sunrise a physician, who had run in at the old woman's cry, came from the house and stopped bareheaded in the breathless heat. For a moment he stared over the moving city and then up into the cloudless blue of the sky. “God damn war!” he said suddenly, and went back to his knife. IX THE MONTJOY BLOOD AGAIN A month later Dan heard of Virginia's death when, at the end of the Seven Days, he was brought wounded into Richmond. As he lay upon church cushions on the floor of an old warehouse on Main Street, with Big Abel shaking a tattered palm-leaf fan at his side, a cavalryman came up to him and held out a hand that trembled slightly from fatigue. “I heard you were here. Can I do anything for you, Beau?” he asked. For an instant Dan hesitated; then the other smiled, and he recognized Jack Morson. “My God! You've been ill!” he exclaimed in horror. Jack laughed and let his hand fall. The boyish colour was gone from his face, and he wore an untrimmed beard which made him look twice his age. “Never better in my life,” he answered shortly. “Some men are made of india-rubber, Montjoy, and I'm one of them. I've managed to get into most of these blessed fights about Richmond, and yet I haven't so much as a pin prick to show for it. But what's wrong with you? Not much, I hope. I've just seen Bland, and he told me he thought you were left at Malvern Hill during that hard rain on Tuesday night. How did you get knocked over, anyway?” “A rifle ball went through my leg,” replied Dan impatiently. “I say, Big Abel, can't you flirt that fan a little faster? These confounded flies stick like molasses.” Then he held up his left hand and looked at it with a grim smile. “A nasty fragment of a shell took off a couple of my fingers,” he added. “At first I thought they had begun throwing hornets' nests from their guns--it felt just like it. Yes, that's the worst with me so far; I've still got a bone to my leg, and I'll be on the field again before long, thank God.” “Well, the worst thing about getting wounded is being stuffed into a hole like this,” returned Jack, glancing about contemptuously. “Whoever has had the charge of our hospital arrangements may congratulate himself that he has made a ghastly mess of them. Why, I found a man over there in the corner whose leg had mortified from sheer neglect, and he told me that the supplies for the sick had given out, and they'd offered him cornbread and bacon for breakfast.” Dan began to toss restlessly, grumbling beneath his breath. “If you ever see a ball making in your direction,” he advised, “dodge it clean or take it square in the mouth; don't go in for any compromises with a gun, they aren't worth it.” He lay silent for a moment, and then spoke proudly. “Big Abel hauled me off the field after I went down. How he found me, God only knows, but find me he did, and under fire, too.”