Whatsoever supplication or remonstrance Thaddeus may have sent up by himself, he took council of some inward monitor, and did not "sputter." He had his reward from Helen, who fell into a mood of tentative caressing. In October they went to Washington. Thaddeus sniffed a few weeks about the streets of the capital, and returned to Hamilton, his bank and club and lonely house, in a state of mind to be expressed by a shrug and the lifting of a white hand in deprecation. In his pursuit of happiness the scent seemed to be lost, the hunt all astray. He realized more than ever how much of his fortune in that commodity he had staked on one issue. He doubted, after all, the wisdom of it, but could not find a way, nor in himself any impulse, to draw back. "The new generation, these new times! They are strenuous, and one grows old." The air was full of the war; the suck of the whirlpool was felt in every corner. Part II Chapter XII Antietam. A big gun boomed far away in the dark. From nearer came the snip-snap of picket-shooting, which increased to a rattle and settled into volleying. On the hill to the right some one climbed on a gun-carriage and stood vaguely against the sky. Shadows came running from the door of a barn into the grass. A sleeper cried out and sat up at their feet, rubbing his trodden hand. "What do you make it?" "We have no troops over there. They're shooting each other." "Shooting their midnight dreams." "Midnight! It's past three." "How should I know? I was king of the Pleiades five minutes ago." "Time for trouble to begin?" "It won't be light for an hour." "No. Turn in, gentlemen." Shadows sat upright in the grass and muttered to each other. "What's the Pleiades, Jimmie?" "Do' know. Wa'n't any at home as I know of." "Stars, you galoop." "That's what the Johnnies were shooting at." "Hey! He must 'a' been jokin'," from the shadow called Jimmie. "Who?" "The cap'n said he was king of 'em, he did." "Oh, go to--" "Can't see any stars to-night." The distant volleying died down to a rattle--to the crack of a single rifle far away, lonely in the immense night, the encircling silence. The woods went around behind the hill on the right. On the left a grassy field stretched off in the dark. One knew by remembrance that it sloped down a gradual mile, till it came somewhere to a slow creek with a mud bottom. Outposts lay forward in a thin line of woods. Some one said that the pickets were in an open field beyond, and that some of them belonged to the other side. In that tense, visionary hour one did not conceive of an enemy as of separate men, watchful in fields, sleeping in distant woods, but of a creature, a thing of folded miles, crouching, sinister, hostile, with red tongue and bitter fangs, waiting for the dawn.