“He talked on rapidly, giving details of the capture, the escape, the pursuit. It was all rather confused. I think he must have frightfully exaggerated the incident. Nothing could have been more unreal than it sounded. And he was just out of a hospital—was suffering still, I could see, from malaria. While he drank his blackberry wine—the best the house had to offer—I remember wishing that I had a good dose of quinine and whiskey to give him. “The narrative lasted a long time; I think he was glad of a rest and of the blackberry wine and biscuits. Lucy had gone to fetch food for the soldiers; but after she had brought it she sat down in her accustomed chair by the old man’s side and bent her head over her knitting. She was a wonderful knitter. During all the years of the war I seldom saw her without her ball of yam and her needles—the long wooden kind that the women used at that time. Even after the dusk fell in the evenings the click of her needles sounded in the darkness. “‘And if he escapes it will mean the capture of Richmond?’ she asked once again when the story was finished. There was no hint of excitement in her manner. Her voice was perfectly toneless. To this day I have no idea what she felt—what she was thinking. “‘If he gets away it is the ruin of us—but he won’t get away. We’ll find him before morning.’ “Rising from his chair, he turned to shake hands with the old man before descending the steps. ‘We’ve got to go on now. I shouldn’t have stopped if we hadn’t been half starved. You’ve done us a world of good, Cousin Lucy. I reckon you’d give your last crust to the soldiers?’ “‘She’d give more than that,’ quavered the old man. ‘You’d give more than that, wouldn’t you, Lucy?’ “‘Yes, I’d give more than that,’ repeated the girl quietly, so quietly that it came as a shock to me—like a throb of actual pain in the midst of a nightmare—when she rose to her feet and added, without a movement, without a gesture, ‘You must not go, Cousin George. He is upstairs in the blue chamber at the front of the house.’ “For an instant surprise held me speechless, transfixed, incredulous; and in that instant I saw a face—a white face of horror and disbelief—look down on us from one of the side-windows of the blue chamber. Then, in a rush it seemed to me the soldiers were everywhere, swarming over the terrace, into the hall, surrounding the house. I had never imagined that a small body of men in uniforms, even ragged uniforms, could so possess and obscure one’s surroundings. The three of us waited there—Lucy had sat down again and taken up her knitting—for what seemed hours, or an eternity. We were still waiting—though, for once, I noticed, the needles did not click in her fingers—when a single shot, followed by a volley, rang out from the rear of the house, from the veranda that looked down on the grove of oaks and the kitchen.