II

The company in which Little Darby and the Millses had enlisted was one

of the many hundred infantry companies which joined and were merged

in the Confederate army. It was in no way particularly signalized by

anything that it did. It was commanded by the gentleman who did most

toward getting it up; and the officers were gentlemen. The seventy odd

men who made the rank and file were of all classes, from the sons of the

oldest and wealthiest planters in the neighborhood to Little Darby and

the dwellers in the district. The war was very different from what those

who went into it expected it to be. Until it had gone on some time it

seemed mainly marching and camping and staying in camp, quite uselessly

as seemed to many, and drilling and doing nothing. Much of the

time--especially later on--was given to marching and getting food;

but drilling and camp duties at first took up most of it. This was

especially hard on the poorer men, no one knew what it was to them. Some

moped, some fell sick. Of the former class was Little Darby. He was too

strong to be sickly as one of the Mills boys was, who died of fever in

hospital only three months after they went in, and too silent to be as

the other, who was jolly and could dance and sing a good song and was

soon very popular in the company; more popular even than Old Cove, who

was popular in several rights, as being about the oldest man in the

company and as having a sort of dry wit when he was in a good humor,

which he generally was. Little Darby was hardly distinguished at all,

unless by the fact that he was somewhat taller than most of his comrades

and somewhat more taciturn. He was only a common soldier of a common

class in an ordinary infantry company, such a company as was common in

the army. He still had the little wallet which he had picked up in the

path that morning he left home. He had asked both of the Mills boys

vaguely if they ever had owned such a piece of property, but they had

not, and when old Cove told him that he had not either, he had contented

himself and carried it about with him somewhat elaborately wrapped up

and tied in an old piece of oilcloth and in his inside jacket pocket for

safety, with a vague feeling that some day he might find the owner

or return it. He was never on specially good terms with the Millses.

Indeed, there was always a trace of coolness between them and him. He

could not give it to them. Now and then he untied and unwrapped it in

a secret place and read a little in the Testament, but that was all.

He never touched a needle or so much as a pin, and when he untied the

parcel he generally counted them to see that they were all there.

So the war went on, with battles coming a little oftener and food

growing ever a little scarcer; but the company was about as before,

nothing particular--what with killing and fever a little thinned, a

good deal faded; and Little Darby just one in a crowd, marching with the

rest, sleeping with the rest, fighting with the rest, starving with

the rest. He was hardly known for a long time, except for his silence,

outside of his mess. Men were fighting and getting killed or wounded

constantly; as for him, he was never touched; and as he did what he was

ordered silently and was silent when he got through, there was no one

to sing his praise. Even when he was sent out on the skirmish line as

a sharp-shooter, if he did anything no one knew it. He would disappear

over a crest, or in a wood, and reappear as silent as if he were hunting

in the swamps of the district; clean his gun; cut up wood; eat what he

could get, and sit by the fire and listen to the talk, as silent awake

as asleep.

One other thing distinguished him, he could handle an axe better than

any man in the company; but no one thought much of that--least of all,

Little Darby; it only brought him a little more work occasionally.

One day, in the heat of a battle which the men knew was being won,

if shooting and cheering and rapid advancing could tell anything, the

advance which had been going on with spirit was suddenly checked by a

murderous artillery fire which swept the top of a slope, along the crest

of which ran a road a little raised between two deep ditches topped by

the remains of heavy fences. The infantry, after a gallant and hopeless

charge, were ordered to lie down in the ditch behind the pike, and were

sheltered from the leaden sleet which swept the crest. Artillery was

needed to clear the field beyond, by silencing the batteries which swept

it, but no artillery could get into position for the ditches, and the

day seemed about to be lost. The only way was up the pike, and the only

break was a gate opening into the field right on top of the hill. The

gate was gone, but two huge wooden gate-posts, each a tree-trunk, still

stood and barred the way. No cannon had room to turn in between them; a

battery had tried and a pile of dead men, horses, and debris marked its

failure. A general officer galloped up with two or three of his staff to

try to start the advance again. He saw the impossibility.

“If we could get a couple of batteries into that field for three

minutes,” he said, “it would do the work, but in ten minutes it will be

too late.”

The company from the old county was lying behind the bank almost exactly

opposite the gate, and every word could be heard.

Where the axe came from no one knew; but a minute later a man slung

himself across the road, and the next second the sharp, steady blows of

an axe were ringing on the pike. The axeman had cut a wide cleft in the

brown wood, and the big chips were flying before his act was quite taken

in, and then a cheer went up from the line. It was no time to cheer,

however; other chips were flying than those from the cutter’s axe,

and the bullets hissed by him like bees, splintering the hard post and

knocking the dust from the road about his feet; but he took no notice of

them, his axe plied as steadily as if he had been cutting a tree in

the woods of the district, and when he had cut one side, he turned as

deliberately and cut the other; then placing his hand high up, he flung

his weight against the post and it went down. A great cheer went up and

the axeman swung back across the road just as two batteries of artillery

tore through the opening he had made.

Few men outside of his company knew who the man was, and few had time to

ask; for the battle was on again and the infantry pushed forward. As for

Little Darby himself, the only thing he said was, “I knowed I could cut

it down in ten minutes.” He had nine bullet holes through his clothes

that night, but Little Darby thought nothing of it, and neither did

others; many others had bullet holes through their bodies that night. It

happened not long afterward that the general was talking of the battle

to an English gentleman who had come over to see something of the war

and was visiting him in his camp, and he mentioned the incident of a

battle won by an axeman’s coolness, but did not know the name of the

man who cut the post away; the captain of the company, however, was the

general’s cousin and was dining with his guest that day, and he said

with pride that he knew the man, that he was in his company, and he gave

the name.

“It is a fine old name,” said the visitor.

“And he is a fine man,” said the captain; but none of this was ever

known by Darby. He was not mentioned in the gazette, because there was

no gazette. The confederate soldiery had no honors save the approval of

their own consciences and the love of their own people. It was not even

mentioned in the district; or, if it was, it was only that he had cut

down a post; other men were being shot to pieces all the time and the

district had other things to think of.

Poor at all times, the people of the district were now absolutely

without means of subsistence. Fortunately for them, they were inured to

hardship; and their men being all gone to the war, the women made such

shift as they could and lived as they might. They hoed their little

patches, fished the streams, and trapped in the woods. But it was poor

enough at best, and the weak went down and only the strong survived.

Mrs. Mills was better off than most, she had a cow--at first, and she

had Vashti. Vashti turned out to be a tower of strength. She trapped

more game than anyone in the district; caught more fish with lines and

traps--she went miles to fish below the forks where the fish were bigger

than above; she learned to shoot with her father’s old gun, which had

been sent back when he got a musket, shot like a man and better than

most men; she hoed the patch, she tended the cow till it was lost, and

then she did many other things. Her mother declared that, when Chris

died (Chris was the boy who died of fever), but for Vashti she could not

have got along at all, and there were many other women in the pines who

felt the same thing.

When the news came that Bob Askew was killed, Vashti was one of the

first who got to Bob’s wife; and when Billy Luck disappeared in a

battle, Vashti gave the best reasons for thinking he had been taken

prisoner; and many a string of fish and many a squirrel and hare found

their way into the empty cabins because Vashti “happened to pass by.”

From having been rather stigmatized as “that Vashti Mills”, she came to

be relied on, and “Vashti” was consulted and quoted as an authority.

One cabin alone she never visited. The house of old Mrs. Stanley, now

almost completely buried under its unpruned wistaria vine, she never

entered. Her mother, as has been said, sometimes went across the bottom,

and now and then took with her a hare or a bird or a string of fish--on

condition from Vashti that it should not be known she had caught them;

but Vashti never went, and Mrs. Mills found herself sometimes put to it

to explain to others her unneighborliness. The best she could make of it

to say that “Vashti, she always DO do her own way.”

How Mrs. Stanley’s wood-pile was kept up nobody knew, if, indeed, it

could be called a wood-pile, when it was only a recurring supply of

dry-wood thrown as if accidentally just at the edge of the clearing.

Mrs. Stanley was not of an imaginative turn, even of enough to explain

how it came that so much dry-wood came to be there broken up just the

right length; and Mrs. Mills knew no more than that “that cow was always

a-goin’ off and a-keepin’ Vashti a-huntin’ everywheres in the worl’.”

All said, however, the women of the district had a hungry time, and the

war bore on them heavily as on everyone else, and as it went on they

suffered more and more. Many a woman went day after day and week after

week without even the small portion of coarse corn-bread which was

ordinarily her common fare. They called oftener and oftener at the

house of their neighbors who owned the plantations near them, and always

received something; but as time went on the plantations themselves were

stripped; the little things they could take with them when they went,

such as eggs, honey, etc., were wanting, and to go too often without

anything to give might make them seem like beggars, and that they were

not. Their husbands and sons were in the army fighting for the South, as

well as those from the plantations, and they stood by this fact on the

same level.

The arrogant looks of the negroes were unpleasant, and in marked

contrast to the universal graciousness of their owners, but they were

slaves and they could afford to despise them. Only they must uphold

their independence. Thus no one outside knew what the women of the

district went through. When they wrote to their husbands or sons that

they were in straits, it meant that they were starving. Such a letter

meant all the more because they were used to hunger, but not to writing,

and a letter meant perhaps days of thought and enterprise and hours of

labor.

As the war went on the hardships everywhere grew heavier and heavier;

the letters from home came oftener and oftener. Many of the men got

furloughs when they were in winter quarters, and sometimes in summer,

too, from wounds, and went home to see their families. Little Darby

never went; he sent his mother his pay, and wrote to her, but he did not

even apply for a furlough, and he had never been touched except for a

couple of flesh wounds which were barely skin-deep. When he heard from

his mother she was always cheerful; and as he knew Vashti had never even

visited her, there was no other reason for his going home. It was in

the late part of the third campaign of the war that he began to think of

going.

When Cove Mills got a letter from his wife and told Little Darby how

“ailin’” and “puny” his mother was getting, Darby knew that the letter

was written by Vashti, and he felt that it meant a great deal. He

applied for a furlough, but was told that no furloughs would be

granted then--which then meant that work was expected. It came shortly

afterward, and Little Darby and the company were in it. Battle followed

battle. A good many men in the company were killed, but, as it happened,

not one of the men from the district was among them, until one day when

the company after a fierce charge found itself hugging the ground in

a wide field, on the far side of which the enemy--infantry and

artillery--was posted in force. Lying down they were pretty well

protected by the conformation of the ground from the artillery; and

lying down, the infantry generally, even with their better guns, could

not hurt them to a great extent; but a line of sharp-shooters, well

placed behind cover of scattered rocks on the far side of the field,

could reach them with their long-range rifles, and galled them with

their dropping fire, picking off man after man. A line of sharp-shooters

was thrown forward to drive them in; but their guns were not as good and

the cover was inferior, and it was only after numerous losses that they

succeeded in silencing most of them. They still left several men up

among the rocks, who from time to time sent a bullet into the line with

deadly effect. One man, in particular, ensconced behind a rock on the

hill-side, picked off the men with unerring accuracy. Shot after shot

was sent at him. At last he was quiet for so long that it seemed he must

have been silenced, and they began to hope; Ad Mills rose to his knees

and in sheer bravado waved his hat in triumph. Just as he did so a puff

of white came from the rock, and Ad Mills threw up his hands and fell

on his back, like a log, stone dead. A groan of mingled rage and dismay

went along the line. Poor old Cove crept over and fell on the boy’s body

with a flesh wound in his own arm. Fifty shots were sent at the rock,

but a puff of smoke from it afterward and a hissing bullet showed that

the marksman was untouched. It was apparent that he was secure behind

his rock bulwark and had some opening through which he could fire at his

leisure. It was also apparent that he must be dislodged if possible; but

how to do it was the question; no one could reach him. The slope down

and the slope up to the group of rocks behind which he lay were both in

plain view, and any man would be riddled who attempted to cross it. A

bit of woods reached some distance up on one side, but not far enough

to give a shot at one behind the rock; and though the ground in that

direction dipped a little, there was one little ridge in full view

of both lines and perfectly bare, except for a number of bodies of

skirmishers who had fallen earlier in the day. It was discussed in the

line; but everyone knew that no man could get across the ridge alive.

While they were talking of it Little Darby, who, with a white face, had

helped old Cove to get his boy’s body back out of fire, slipped off to

one side, rifle in hand, and disappeared in the wood.

They were still talking of the impossibility of dislodging the

sharp-shooter when a man appeared on the edge of the wood. He moved

swiftly across the sheltered ground, stooping low until he reached the

edge of the exposed place, where he straightened up and made a dash

across it. He was recognized instantly by some of the men of his company

as Little Darby, and a buzz of astonishment went along the line. What

could he mean, it was sheer madness; the line of white smoke along

the wood and the puffs of dust about his feet showed that bullets were

raining around him. The next second he stopped dead-still, threw up his

arms, and fell prone on his face in full view of both lines. A groan

went up from his comrades; the whole company knew he was dead, and on

the instant a puff of white from the rock and a hissing bullet told that

the sharp-shooter there was still intrenched in his covert. The men were

discussing Little Darby, when someone cried out and pointed to him. He

was still alive, and not only alive, but was moving--moving slowly but

steadily up the ridge and nearer on a line with the sharp-shooter, as

flat on the ground as any of the motionless bodies about him. A strange

thrill of excitement went through the company as the dark object dragged

itself nearer to the rock, and it was not allayed when the whack of

a bullet and the well-known white puff of smoke recalled them to the

sharp-shooter’s dangerous aim; for the next second the creeping figure

sprang erect and made a dash for the spot. He had almost reached it when

the sharp-shooter discovered him, and the men knew that Little Darby had

underestimated the quickness of his hand and aim; for at the same moment

the figure of the man behind the rock appeared for a second as he sprang

erect; there was a puff of white and Little Darby stopped and staggered

and sank to his knees. The next second, however, there was a puff from

where he knelt, and then he sank flat once more, and a moment later

rolled over on his face on the near side of the rock and just at its

foot. There were no more bullets sent from that rock that day--at least,

against the Confederates--and that night Little Darby walked into his

company’s bivouac, dusty from head to foot and with a bullet-hole in his

clothes not far from his heart; but he said it was only a spent bullet

and had just knocked the breath out of him. He was pretty sore from it

for a time, but was able to help old Cove to get his boy’s body off and

to see him start; for the old man’s wound, though not dangerous, was

enough to disable him and get him a furlough, and he determined to take

his son’s body home, which the captain’s influence enabled him to do.

Between his wound and his grief the old man was nearly helpless, and

accepted Darby’s silent assistance with mute gratitude. Darby asked him

to tell his mother that he was getting on well, and sent her what money

he had--his last two months’ pay--not enough to have bought her a pair

of stockings or a pound of sugar. The only other message he sent was

given at the station just as Cove set out. He said:

“Tell Vashti as I got him as done it.”

Old Cove grasped his hand tremulously and faltered his promise to do so,

and the next moment the train crawled away and left Darby to plod back

to camp in the rain, vague and lonely in the remnant of what had once

been a gray uniform. If there was one thing that troubled him it was

that he could not return Vashti the needle-case until he replaced the

broken needles--and there were so many of them broken.

After this Darby was in some sort known, and was put pretty constantly

on sharp-shooter service.

The men went into winter quarters before Darby heard anything from home.

It came one day in the shape of a letter in the only hand in the world

he knew--Vashti’s. What it could mean he could not divine--was his

mother dead? This was the principal thing that occurred to him. He

studied the outside. It had been on the way a month by the postmark,

for letters travelled slowly in those days, and a private soldier in an

infantry company was hard to find unless the address was pretty clear,

which this was not. He did not open it immediately. His mother must be

dead, and this he could not face. Nothing else would have made Vashti

write. At last he went off alone and opened it, and read it, spelling

it out with some pains. It began without an address, with the simple

statement that her father had arrived with Ad’s body and that it

had been buried, and that his wound was right bad and her mother was

mightily cut up with her trouble. Then it mentioned his mother and said

she had come to Ad’s funeral, though she could not walk much now and

had never been over to their side since the day after he--Darby--had

enlisted; but her father had told her as how he had killed the man as

shot Ad, and so she made out to come that far. Then the letter broke

off from giving news, and as if under stress of feelings long pent up,

suddenly broke loose: she declared that she loved him; that she had

always loved him--always--ever since he had been so good to her--a great

big boy to a little bit of a girl--at school, and that she did not know

why she had been so mean to him; for when she had treated him worst she

had loved him most; that she had gone down the path that night when

they had met, for the purpose of meeting him and of letting him know she

loved him; but something had made her treat him as she did, and all the

time she could have let him kill her for love of him. She said she had

told her mother and father she loved him and she had tried to tell his

mother, but she could not, for she was afraid of her; but she wanted him

to tell her when he came; and she had tried to help her and keep her

in wood ever since he went away, for his sake. Then the letter told how

poorly his mother was and how she had failed of late, and she said she

thought he ought to get a furlough and come home, and when he did she

would marry him. It was not very well written, nor wholly coherent;

at least it took some time to sink fully into Darby’s somewhat dazed

intellect; but in time he took it in, and when he did he sat like a man

overwhelmed. At the end of the letter, as if possibly she thought, in

the greatness of her relief at her confession, that the temptation she

held out might prove too great even for him, or possibly only because

she was a woman, there was a postscript scrawled across the coarse, blue

Confederate paper: “Don’t come without a furlough; for if you don’t come

honorable I won’t marry you.” This, however, Darby scarcely read. His

being was in the letter. It was only later that the picture of his

mother ill and failing came to him, and it smote him in the midst of his

happiness and clung to him afterward like a nightmare. It haunted him.

She was dying.

He applied for a furlough; but furloughs were hard to get then and he

could not hear from it; and when a letter came in his mother’s name in

a lady’s hand which he did not know, telling him of his mother’s poverty

and sickness and asking him if he could get off to come and see her, it

seemed to him that she was dying, and he did not wait for the furlough.

He was only a few days’ march from home and he felt that he could see

her and get back before he was wanted. So one day he set out in the

rain. It was a scene of desolation that he passed through, for the

country was the seat of war; fences were gone, woods burnt, and fields

cut up and bare; and it rained all the time. A little before morning,

on the night of the third day, he reached the edge of the district and

plunged into its well-known pines, and just as day broke he entered the

old path which led up the little hill to his mother’s cabin. All during

his journey he had been picturing the meeting with some one else besides

his mother, and if Vashti had stood before him as he crossed the old

log he would hardly have been surprised. Now, however, he had other

thoughts; as he reached the old clearing he was surprised to find it

grown up in small pines already almost as high as his head, and tall

weeds filled the rows among the old peach-trees and grew up to the very

door. He had been struck by the desolation all the way as he came along;

but it had not occurred to him that there must be a change at his own

home; he had always pictured it as he left it, as he had always thought

of Vashti in her pink calico, with her hat in her hand and her heavy

hair almost falling down over her neck. Now a great horror seized him.

The door was wet and black. His mother must be dead. He stopped and

peered through the darkness at the dim little structure. There was a

little smoke coming out of the chimney, and the next instant he strode

up to the door. It was shut, but the string was hanging out and he

pulled it and pushed the door open. A thin figure seated in the small

split-bottomed chair on the hearth, hovering as close as possible over

the fire, straightened up and turned slowly as he stepped into the room,

and he recognized his mother--but how changed! She was quite white

and little more than a skeleton. At sight of the figure behind her she

pulled herself to her feet, and peered at him through the gloom.

“Mother!” he said.

“Darby!” She reached her arms toward him, but tottered so that she would

have fallen, had he not caught her and eased her down into her chair.

As she became a little stronger she made him tell her about the battles

he was in. Mr. Mills had come to tell her that he had killed the man who

killed Ad. Darby was not a good narrator, however, and what he had to

tell was told in a few words. The old woman revived under it, however,

and her eyes had a brighter light in them.

Darby was too much engrossed in taking care of his mother that day to

have any thought of any one else. He was used to a soldier’s scant fare,

but had never quite taken in the fact that his mother and the women at

home had less even than they in the field. He had never seen, even

in their poorest days after his father’s death, not only the house

absolutely empty, but without any means of getting anything outside. It

gave him a thrill to think what she must have endured without letting

him know. As soon as he could leave her, he went into the woods with his

old gun, and shortly returned with a few squirrels which he cooked for

her; the first meat, she told him, that she had tasted for weeks. On

hearing it his heart grew hot. Why had not Vashti come and seen about

her? She explained it partly, however, when she told him that every one

had been sick at Cove Mills’s, and old Cove himself had come near

dying. No doctor could be got to see them, as there was none left in the

neighborhood, and but for Mrs. Douwill she did not know what they would

have done. But Mrs. Douwill was down herself now.

The young man wanted to know about Vashti, but all he could manage to

make his tongue ask was,

“Vashti?”

She could not tell him, she did not know anything about Vashti. Mrs.

Mills used to bring her things sometimes, till she was taken down, but

Vashti had never come to see her; all she knew was that she had been

sick with the others.

That she had been sick awoke in the young man a new tenderness, the

deeper because he had done her an injustice; and he was seized with a

great longing to see her. All his old love seemed suddenly accumulated

in his heart, and he determined to go and see her at once, as he had not

long to stay. He set about his little preparations forthwith, putting

on his old clothes which his mother had kept ever since he went away, as

being more presentable than the old worn and muddy, threadbare uniform,

and brushing his long yellow hair and beard into something like order.

He changed from one coat to the other the little package which he always

carried, thinking that he would show it to her with the hole in it,

which the sharp-shooter’s bullet had made that day, and he put her

letter into the same pocket; his heart beating at the sight of her hand

and the memory of the words she had written, and then he set out. It

was already late in the evening, and after the rain the air was soft and

balmy, though the western sky was becoming overcast again by a cloud,

which low down on the horizon was piling up mountain on mountain of

vapor, as if it might rain again by night. Darby, however, having

dressed, crossed the flat without much trouble, only getting a little

wet in some places where the logs were gone. As he turned into the path

up the hill, he stood face to face with Vashti. She was standing by

a little spring which came from under an old oak, the only one on the

hill-side of pines, and was in a faded black calico. He scarcely took in

at first that it was Vashti, she was so changed. He had always thought

of her as he last saw her that evening in pink, with her white throat

and her scornful eyes. She was older now than she was then; looked more

a woman and taller; and her throat if anything was whiter than ever

against her black dress; her face was whiter too, and her eyes darker

and larger. At least, they opened wide when Darby appeared in the path.

Her hands went up to her throat as if she suddenly wanted breath. All of

the young man’s heart went out to her, and the next moment he was within

arm’s length of her. Her one word was in his ears:

“Darby!” He was about to catch her in his arms when a gesture restrained

him, and her look turned him to stone.

“Yer uniform?” she gasped, stepping back. Darby was not quick always,

and he looked down at his clothes and then at her again, his dazed brain

wondering.

“Whar’s yer uniform?” she asked.

“At home,” he said, quietly, still wondering. She seemed to catch some

hope.

“Yer got a furlough?” she said, more quietly, coming a little nearer to

him, and her eyes growing softer.

“Got a furlough?” he repeated to gain time for thought. “I--I----” He

had never thought of it before; the words in her letter flashed into his

mind, and he felt his face flush. He would not tell her a lie. “No, I

ain’t got no furlough,” he said, and paused whilst he tried to get his

words together to explain. But she did not give him time.

“What you doin’ with them clo’se on?” she asked again.

“I--I----” he began, stammering as her suspicion dawned on him.

“You’re a deserter!” she said, coldly, leaning forward, her hands

clenched, her face white, her eyes contracted.

“A what!” he asked aghast, his brain not wholly taking in her words.

“You’re a deserter!” she said again--“and--a coward!”

All the blood in him seemed to surge to his head and leave his heart

like ice. He seized her arm with a grip like steel.

“Vashti Mills,” he said, with his face white, “don’t you say that to

me--if yer were a man I’d kill yer right here where yer stan’!” He

tossed her hand from him, and turned on his heel.

The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point

in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the

other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water as if he

were on dry land. She could not have made him hear if she had wished it;

for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines, bending

them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom into white

waves, and the thunder which had been rumbling in the distance suddenly

broke with a great peal just overhead.

In a few minutes the rain came; but the girl did not mind it. She stood

looking across the bottom until it came in sheets, wetting her to the

skin and shutting out everything a few yards away.

The thunder-storm passed, but all that night the rain came down, and all

the next day, and when it held up a little in the evening the bottom was

a sea.

The rain had not prevented Darby from going out--he was used to it; and

he spent most of the day away from home. When he returned he brought his

mother a few provisions, as much meal perhaps as a child might carry,

and spent the rest of the evening sitting before the fire, silent and

motionless, a flame burning back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on

his brow. He was in his uniform, which he had put on again the night

before as soon as he got home, and the steam rose from it as he sat. The

other clothes were in a bundle on the floor where he had tossed them

the evening before. He never moved except when his mother now and then

spoke, and then sat down again as before. Presently he rose and said he

must be going; but as he rose to his feet, a pain shot through him like

a knife; everything turned black before him and he staggered and fell

full length on the floor.

He was still on the floor next morning, for his mother had not been able

to get him to the bed, or to leave to get any help; but she had made

him a pallet, and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging

fever. Feeble as she was, the sudden demand on her had awakened the old

woman’s faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible.

One thing puzzled her: in his incoherent mutterings, Darby constantly

referred to a furlough and a deserter. She knew that he had a furlough,

of course; but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the

words. So the day passed and then, Darby’s delirium still continuing,

she made out to get to a neighbor’s to ask help. The neighbor had to go

to Mrs. Douwill’s as the only place where there was a chance of getting

any medicine, and it happened that on the way back she fell in with a

couple of soldiers, on horseback, who asked her a few questions. They

were members of a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she

left them they had learned her errand.

Fortunately, Darby’s illness took a better turn next day, and by sunset

he was free from delirium.

Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills’s during these days any

more than at Mrs. Stanley’s. Vashti was in a state of mind which made

her mother wonder if she were not going crazy. She set it down to the

storm she had been out in that evening, for Vashti had not mentioned

Darby’s name. She kept his presence to herself, thinking that--thinking

so many things that she could not speak or eat. Her heart was like lead

within her; but she could not rid herself of the thought of Darby. She

could have torn it out for hate of herself; and to all her mother’s

questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx. For two days she

neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill through the rain

which still kept up--something was going on over there, but what it was

she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day, she could

stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something; she

could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley’s, even if she had wished to do so;

for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side, and it was

over her head in the current. She set off, therefore, up the stream on

her own side, thinking to learn something up that way. She met the woman

who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening, and she told her all

she knew, mentioning among other things the men of the conscript guard

she had seen. Vashti’s heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat.

As she was so near she went on up to the Cross-roads; but just as she

stepped out into the road before she reached there, she came on a small

squad of horsemen riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass;

but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.

They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were the

conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them who seemed

to know the roads and to be showing them the way. Her one thought was

of Darby; he would be arrested and shot. When they questioned her,

therefore, she told them of the roads leading to the big river around

the fork and quite away from the district. Whilst they were still

talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti

was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the

Federals. She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses

trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry

moving dinned in her ears; but the next moment, when the others gave way

and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to

question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause. She had

all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating

what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture

of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it. She made

out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and

marched in the night as well as in the day. She admitted that she had

never been on that road but once. And when she was taken along with them

a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon

should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and

ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she

might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander

out of the camp. She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than

she began to run with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby.

Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise

her, help her. She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the

branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she

struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it--she waded

through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top

of her speed.

It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the

pines in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out, and she

knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously. All she could

make out to say was, “Darby.” The old woman was on her feet, and the

young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.

Darby was the first to speak.

“What do you want here?” he asked, sternly.

“Darby--the Yankees--all around,” she gasped--“out on the road yonder.”

“What!”

A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his

jacket while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had

met had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier

had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women

left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier’s instinct

told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid

which had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the

capital; and from their position, unless they could be delayed they

might surprise it. In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed

to illuminate the young man’s mind. By the time he was dressed he was

ready with his plan--Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard

stayed?

Yes, down the road at a certain place. Good; it was on the way. Then he

gave her his orders. She was to go to this place and rouse any one she

might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city with all

speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible at a certain

point on the road by which the raiders were travelling, where a little

stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece of swampy woods. They

would find a barricade there and a small force might possibly keep them

back. Then she was to go on down and have the bridge, ten or twelve

miles below on the road between the forks burned, and if necessary was

to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise. But they were on

the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained, to which Darby

only said, he knew that, but they would come back and try the bridge

road.

“And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you

hear--and now go,” he said.

“Yes--I’ll do it,” said the girl obediently and turned to the door. The

next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun and was getting his

axe.

“And, Darby----?” she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.

“Go,” said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went just as

he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat white

and dumb. As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back up

the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door with his

gun in one hand and his axe in the other.

An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him, was cutting

down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream, and

throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road, in

a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen’s work for several hours, and

Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.

Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened, and then

went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed a barricade

which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass, when,

stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him to put down his

axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud. His practised

ear told him that there were only three or four of them, and he took up

his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited. Presently the little

squad of horsemen came in sight, a mere black group in the road. They

saw the dark mass lying across the road and reined in; then after a

colloquy came on down slowly. Darby waited until they were within fifty

yards of his barricade, and then fired at the nearest one. A horse

wheeled, plunged, and then galloped away in the darkness, and several

rounds from pistols were fired toward him, whilst something went on

on the ground. Before he could finish reloading, however, the men had

turned around and were out of sight. In a minute Darby climbed over the

barricade and strode up the road after them. He paused where the man he

had shot had fallen. The place in the mud was plain; but his comrades

had taken him up and carried him off. Darby hurried along after them.

Day was just breaking, and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave

their bivouac when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side

of the camp from that where Little Darby had been felling trees,

and walked up to the picket. He was halted and brought up where the

fire-light could shine on him, and was roughly questioned--a tall young

countryman, very pale and thin, with an old ragged slouched hat pulled

over his eyes, and an old patched uniform on his gaunt frame. He did not

seem at all disturbed by the pistols displayed around him, but seated

himself at the fire and looked about in a dull kind of way.

“What do you want?” they asked him, seeing how cool he was.

“Don’t you want a guide?” he asked, drawlingly.

“Who are you?” inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.

“Some calls me a d’serter,” he said, slowly.

The men all looked at him curiously.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I thought maybe as you wanted a guide,” he said, quietly.

“We don’t want you. We’ve got all the guide we want,” answered the

corporal, roughly, “and we don’t want any spies around here either, you

understand?”

“Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an’ it’s sort o’

hard to git erlong through down yonder way if you don’t know the way

toller’ble well?”

“Yes, he knows the way too--every foot of it--and a good deal more than

you’ll see of it if you don’t look out.”

“Oh! That road down that way is sort o’ stopped up,” said the man, as if

he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him. “They’s

soldiers on it too a little fur’er down, and they’s done got word you’re

a-comin’ that a-way.”

“What’s that?” they asked, sharply.

“Leastways it’s stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and

about as nigh as that,” went on the speaker, in the same level voice.

“Where do you live?” they asked him.

“I lives back in the pines here a piece.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“About twenty-three years, I b’leeves; ‘ats what my mother says.”

“You know all the country about here?”

“Ought to.”

“Been in the army?”

“Ahn--hahn.”

“What did you desert for?”

Darby looked at him leisurely.

“‘D you ever know a man as ‘lowed he’d deserted? I never did.” A faint

smile flickered on his pale face.

He was taken to the camp before the commander, a dark, self-contained

looking man with a piercing eye and a close mouth, and there closely

questioned as to the roads, and he gave the same account he had already

given. The negro guide was brought up and his information tallied with

the new comer’s as far as he knew it, though he knew well only the road

which they were on and which Darby said was stopped up. He knew, too,

that a road such as Darby offered to take them by ran somewhere down

that way and joined the road they were on a good distance below; but he

thought it was a good deal longer way and they had to cross a fork of

the river.

There was a short consultation between the commander and one or two

other officers, and then the commander turned to Darby, and said:

“What you say about the road’s being obstructed this way is partly true;

do you guarantee that the other road is clear?”

Darby paused and reflected.

“I’ll guide you,” he said, slowly.

“Do you guarantee that the bridge on the river is standing and that we

can get across?”

“Hit’s standing now, fur as I know.”

“Do you understand that you are taking your life in your hand?”

Darby looked at him coolly.

“And that if you take us that way and for any cause--for any cause

whatsoever we fail to get through safe, we will hang you to the nearest

tree?”

Darby waited as if in deep reflection.

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll guide you.”

The silence that followed seemed to extend all over the camp. The

commander was reflecting and the others had their eyes fastened on

Darby. As for him, he sat as unmoved as if he had been alone in the

woods.

“All right,” said the leader, suddenly, “it’s a bargain: we’ll take your

road. What do you want?”

“Could you gi’me a cup o’ coffee? It’s been some little time since I had

anything to eat, an’ I been sort o’ sick.”

“You shall have ‘em,” said the officer, “and good pay besides, if you

lead us straight; if not, a limb and a halter rein; you understand?”

A quarter of an hour later they were on the march, Darby trudging in

front down the middle of the muddy road between two of the advance

guard, whose carbines were conveniently carried to insure his fidelity.

What he thought of, who might know?--plain; poor; ignorant; unknown;

marching every step voluntarily nearer to certain and ignominious death

for the sake of his cause.

As day broke they saw a few people who lived near the road, and some of

them recognized Darby and looked their astonishment to see him guiding

them. One or two of the women broke out at him for a traitor and a dog,

to which he said nothing; but only looked a little defiant with two red

spots burning in his thin cheeks, and trudged on as before; now and then

answering a question; but for the most part silent.

He must have thought of his mother, old and by herself in her cabin;

but she would not live long; and of Vashti some. She had called him a

deserter, as the other women had done. A verse from the Testament she

gave him may have come into his mind; he had never quite understood it:

“Blessed are ye when men shall revile ye.” Was this what it meant?

This and another one seemed to come together. It was something about

“enduring hardship like a good soldier”, he could not remember it

exactly. Yes, he could do that. But Vashti had called him a deserter.

Maybe now though she would not; and the words in the letter she had

written him came to him, and the little package in his old jacket pocket

made a warm place there; and he felt a little fresher than before. The

sun came up and warmed him as he trudged along, and the country grew

flatter and flatter, and the road deeper and deeper. They were passing

down into the bottom. On either side of them were white-oak swamps, so

that they could not see a hundred yards ahead; but for several miles

Darby had been watching for the smoke of the burning bridge, and as they

neared the river his heart began to sink. There was one point on the

brow of a hill before descending to the bottom, where a sudden bend of

the road and curve of the river two or three miles below gave a sight

of the bridge. Darby waited for this, and when he reached it and saw the

bridge still standing his heart sank like lead. Other eyes saw it too,

and a score of glasses were levelled at it, and a cheer went up.

“Why don’t you cheer too?” asked an officer. “You have more to make or

lose than anyone else.”

“We ain’t there yit,” said Darby.

Once he thought he had seen a little smoke, but it had passed away, and

now they were within three miles of the bridge and there was nothing.

What if, after all, Vashti had failed and the bridge was still standing!

He would really have brought the raiders by the best way and have helped

them. His heart at the thought came up into his throat. He stopped and

began to look about as if he doubted the road. When the main body came

up, however, the commander was in no doubt, and a pistol stuck against

his head gave him to understand that no fooling would be stood. So he

had to go on.

As to Vashti, she had covered the fifteen miles which lay between the

district and the fork-road; and had found and sent a messenger to give

warning in the city; but not finding any of the homeguard where she

thought they were, she had borrowed some matches and had trudged on

herself to execute the rest of Darby’s commands.

The branches were high from the backwater of the fork, and she often had

to wade up to her waist, but she kept on, and a little after daylight

she came to the river. Ordinarily, it was not a large stream; a boy

could chuck a stone across it, and there was a ford above the bridge

not very deep in dry weather, which people sometimes took to water their

horses, or because they preferred to ride through the water to crossing

the steep and somewhat rickety old bridge. Now, however, the water

was far out in the woods, and long before the girl got in sight of the

bridge she was wading up to her knees. When she reached the point where

she could see it, her heart for a moment failed her; the whole flat was

under water. She remembered Darby’s command, however, and her courage

came back to her. She knew that it could not be as deep as it looked

between her and the bridge, for the messenger had gone before her that

way, and a moment later she had gone back and collected a bundle of

“dry-wood”, and with a long pole to feel her way she waded carefully in.

As it grew deeper and deeper until it reached her breast, she took the

matches out and held them in her teeth, holding her bundle above her

head. It was hard work to keep her footing this way, however, and once

she stepped into a hole and went under to her chin, having a narrow

escape from falling into a place which her pole could not fathom; but

she recovered herself and at last was on the bridge. When she tried to

light a fire, however, her matches would not strike. They as well as the

wood had gotten wet when she slipped, and not one would light. She might

as well have been at her home in the district. When every match had been

tried and tried again on a dry stone, only to leave a white streak of

smoking sulphur on it, she sat down and cried. For the first time she

felt cold and weary. The rays of the sun fell on her and warmed her a

little, and she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked up. The sun had

just come up over the hill. It gave her courage. She turned and looked

the other way from which she had come--nothing but a waste of water and

woods. Suddenly, from a point up over the nearer woods a little sparkle

caught her eye; there must be a house there, she thought; they might

have matches, and she would go back and get some. But there it was

again--it moved. There was another--another--and something black moving.

She sprang to her feet and strained her eyes. Good God! they were

coming! In a second she had turned the other way, rushed across the

bridge, and was dashing through the water to her waist. The water was

not wide that way. The hill rose almost abruptly on that side, and up it

she dashed, and along the road. A faint curl of smoke caught her eye and

she made for it through the field.

It was a small cabin, and the woman in it had just gotten her fire

well started for the morning, when a girl bare-headed and bare-footed,

dripping wet to the skin, her damp hair hanging down her back, her face

white and her eyes like coals, rushed in almost without knocking and

asked for a chunk of fire. The woman had no time to refuse (she told of

it afterward when she described the burning of the bridge); for without

waiting for answer and before she really took in that it was not a

ghost, the girl had seized the biggest chunk on the hearth and was

running with it across the field. In fact, the woman rather thought she

was an evil spirit; for she saw her seize a whole panel of fence--more

rails than she could have carried to save her life, she said, and dashed

with them over the hill.

In Vashti’s mind, indeed, it was no time to waste words, she was back

on the bridge with the chunk of fire and an armful of rails before the

woman recovered from her astonishment, and was down on her knees blowing

her chunk to rekindle it. The rails, however, like everything else,

were wet and would not light, and she was in despair. At last she got a

little blaze started, but it would not burn fast; it simply smoked. She

expected the soldiers to come out of the woods every minute, and every

second she was looking up to see if they were in sight. What would Darby

think? What would happen if she failed? She sprang up to look around:

the old rail of the bridge caught her eye; it was rotted, but what

remained was heart and would burn like light-wood. She tore a piece

of it down and stuck one end in the fire: it caught and sputtered and

suddenly flamed up; the next second she was tearing the rail down all

along and piling it on the blaze, and as it caught she dashed back

through the water and up the hill, and brought another armful of rails.

Back and forth she waded several times and piled on rails until she got

a stack of them--two stacks, and the bridge floor dried and caught and

began to blaze; and when she brought her last armful it was burning all

across. She had been so busy bringing wood that she had forgotten to

look across to the other side for some time, and was only reminded of

it as she was wading back with her last armful of rails by something

buzzing by her ear, and the second after the crack of a half-dozen guns

followed from the edge of the wood the other side. She could not see

them well for the burden in her arms, but she made out a number of

horses dashing into the water on the little flat, and saw some puffs of

smoke about their heads. She was bound to put her wood on, however, so

she pushed ahead, went up on the bridge through the smoke as far as she

could go, and flung her rails on the now devouring fire. A sudden veer

of the wind blew the smoke behind her and bent the flames aside, and

she could see clear across the fire to the other bank. She saw a great

number of men on horses at the edge of the woods, in a sort of mass;

and a half-dozen or so in the water riding up to their saddle-skirts

half-way to the bridge, and between the first two, wading in water to

his waist, Darby. He was bare-headed and he waved his hat to her, and

she heard a single cheer. She waved her hand to him, and there was

a little puff of smoke and something occurred in the water among the

horses. The smoke from the fire suddenly closed around her and shut out

everything from her eyes, and when it blew away again one of the horses

had thrown his rider in the water. There was a lot of firing both from

the edge of the wood and from the horsemen in the water, and Darby had

disappeared.

She made her way back to the bank and plunged into a clump of bushes,

where she was hidden and watched the raiders. She saw several of them

try to ford the river, one got across but swam back, the others were

swept down by the current, and the horse of one got out below without

his rider. The other she did not see again.

Soon after their comrade had rejoined them, the men on the edge of the

wood turned around and disappeared, and a half-hour later she saw the

glint of the sun on their arms and accoutrements as they crossed over

the top of the hill returning two miles above.

*****

This is the story of the frustration of the raid upon which so much hope

was built by some in high position at Washington. A day was lost, and

warning was given to the Confederate Government, and the bold plan of

the commander of the raiding party was defeated.

As to Little Darby, the furlough he had applied for came, but came too

late and was returned. For a time some said he was a deserter; but two

women knew differently.

A Federal soldier who was taken prisoner gave an account of the raid. He

said that a contraband had come from Washington and undertaken to lead

them across the country, and that he had brought them around the head

of the streams, when one night a rebel deserter came into camp and

undertook to show them a better way by a road which ran between the

rivers, but crossed lower down by a bridge; that they had told him that,

if for any reason they failed to get through by his road they would hang

him, a bargain which he had accepted. That he had led them straight, but

when they had got to the bridge it had been set on fire and was burning

at that moment; that a half-dozen men, of whom he, the narrator, was

one, rode in, taking the guide along with them, to see if they could not

put the fire out, or, failing that, find the ford; and when they were

about half-way across the little flat they saw the person on the bridge

in the very act of burning it, and waving his hand in triumph; and the

man who was riding abreast of him in front fired his carbine at him. As

he did so the deserter wheeled on him, and said, “God d--n you--don’t

you know that’s a woman,” and springing on him like a tiger tore him

from his horse; and, before they took in what he was doing, had, before

their very eyes, flung both of them into a place where the current was

running, and they had disappeared. They had seen the deserter’s head

once in the stream lower down, and had fired at him, and he thought had

hit him, as he went down immediately and they did not see him again.

This is all that was known of Little Darby, except that a year or more

afterward, and nearly a year after Mrs. Stanley’s death, a package with

an old needle-case in it and a stained little Testament with a bullet

hole through it, was left at the Cross-roads, with a message that a man

who had died at the house of the person who left it as he was trying

to make his way back to his command, asked to have that sent to Vashti

Mills.

The End.