"You have been taking care of these men!"
"I gave them water and biscuit, and I talked to them."
Henry went a step nearer the parlor door.
"That man is—is dead, Emmeline! And you've been here alone!"
"I wasn't alone," protested Emmeline. Between her and yesterday, even between her and this morning, there was falling a haze, gray and concealing as the low-lying clouds outside. She began to weep. "There was some one here to take care of me. I have been safe all the time. And he is gone away forever!"
Henry looked into the parlor and the sitting-room, and then went upstairs. Emmeline heard him exclaim. When he came down again, he went to the kitchen door and looked out. The trampled fields were already sodden. At the foot of the garden was a trench, begun for a well and abandoned. It was not deep, but it was deep enough. There, shrouded in Grandmother Willing's comforters, were laid those who in this house had given their lives for their convictions. One of the Watson boys, coming to see how his neighbors had fared, saved Emmeline a share in the last sad ceremony of battle.
Presently night fell upon the little farmhouse. Henry and Emmeline slept side by side on Grandmother Willing's kitchen floor. Often Henry rose and went about the house to minister to the wounded in Grandmother Willing's beds. When he returned, he laid a protecting arm across his little sister and so fell asleep once more. The mystery of his release was now clear to him. The humanity of the act, the helplessness of his enemy, combined to create in his heart a bitter hatred of war, a hatred felt by all who had anything to do with that sad battlefield.
The broadening light of Sunday morning wakened brother and sister. Across the wide valley between the two battle lines, great wagons were traveling swiftly. For friend and foe alike doctors and nurses of the victorious army had begun their work of mercy. To the door of the Willing farmhouse came at noon an ambulance. Some houses the attendants had found deserted except for their suffering guests. In others were women who had performed incredible and uncounted deeds of mercy. Each house had its epic of heroism and danger and sorrow. A charm seemed to have been laid upon these heroic ministers; it was as if an angel standing before them had protected them in their ways. Of them all, only one had perished.
In the Willing house there was little for doctors or nurses to do. The house was orderly once more; the surviving soldiers asked feebly about the result of the battle, and when they heard, turned their faces away even from Emmeline.
The homeward journey of Grandmother and Grandfather Willing ended in the middle of Sunday afternoon. It had been much more round-about than Grandfather Willing had planned, more awful than he had dreamed. As they drew near the scene of battle and beheld on every side its sad destruction, their hearts failed them utterly. Where was Mary? How was poor Bertha? Where was Emmeline, Emmeline who was forever getting into mischief of some kind? Above all, where was Henry?