"Come back? Those rag-a-bones? It 'ud go hard with them if they did. The Unionists wouldn't jump before 'em like the rabbits here. But I didn't jump! The Bateses fled once more for their lives, it's the seventeenth time they've saved their valuable commodities from the foe. Down the street they flew, their tin dishes and their precious chiny rattling in their wagon. 'Oh, my kind sir!' says Lillian to the raggedy man you fed,—'oh, my kind sir, I surrender!' 'You're right you do,' says he. 'We're goin' to eat you up!'—'Lady,' says that same snip to me, 'you'd better leave your home.' 'Worm!' says I back to him, 'you leave my home!' And you fed him, you soft-heart!"
"He ate like an animal," said Mary; "as though he had had nothing for days."
"And all the cave-dwellers was talkin' about divin' for their cellars. I wasn't goin' into no cellar. Here I stay, aboveground, till they lay me out for good."
Mary Bowman laughed suddenly, hysterically. She had laughed thus far through all the sorrows war had brought,—poverty, separation, anxiety. She might still laugh; there was no danger; Early had gone in one direction, the Union soldiers in the other.
"Did you see him dive into the apple-butter, Hannah Casey? His face was smeared with it. He couldn't wait till the biscuits were out of the oven. He—" She stopped and listened, frowning. She looked out once more toward the ridge with its moving spots, then down at the town with its larger spots, then back at the pines, standing straight and tall in the July sunshine. She could see the white tombstones beneath the trees.
"Listen!" she cried.
"To what?" demanded Hannah Casey.
For a few seconds the women stood silently. There were still the same faint, distant sounds, but they were not much louder, not much more numerous than could be heard in the village on any summer morning. A heart which dreaded ominous sound might have been set at rest by the peace and stillness.
Hannah Casey spoke irritably. "What do you hear?"
"Nothing," answered Mary Bowman. "But I thought I heard men marching. I believe it's my heart beating! I thought I heard them in the night. Could you sleep?"