The man scowled still more heavily. It seemed to Elizabeth that the time for delay was past. She was about to say, “Come on, I’ll find it for you!”
Then Smith’s words halted her.
“Your brother can find place in the grave with his gran’pappy, that he can. The mountain people didn’t take nothin’ from him, I can tell you!”
Elizabeth’s hands pressed close upon the coarse bark of the tree against which she leaned. The pressure hurt, but she wished it to hurt. It seemed to her that physical pain would help her to clearness of thought. Once she feared that she was going to faint, then strength came back. Was she to hear even from these evil lips mockery and reproach for John Baring? Had these been his friends? Had he, perhaps, hidden here among them, had he taken refuge with them? They, too, were enemies of their country—one of them had fired upon the flag! Did John Baring die here, was he, perhaps, killed by them after some quarrel? Was it he who, in the old woman’s words, had been “shot and buried”? Was there any truth in anything they said?
“It ain’t a hundred yards away where he lays,” said Black Smith. “He went counter to the mountain people, an’ see what become of him! Will you give me the paper?”
Elizabeth bent her head. John Baring had ruined the lives of many of his kin; he should not destroy Herbert’s. Again she determined that she would give them the paper and provide so that the old woman should have the decent burial that she craved, and then they would obey the advice of friend and foe and go away.
That is, they would go, if it were not too late. She did not believe that they would starve Herbert, or that he sat crying for her. But he might be ill.
“I will—” began Elizabeth.
Then, suddenly, Elizabeth stopped. The arching trees seemed to contract into the ceiling of a low room, she smelled not the fresh, living, woodsy odors about her, but the odor of dry wood, of old beams and broad ceiling-boards, dried for fifty years under a roof. She saw herself rising on tiptoe to read, and she heard Herbert’s voice.
“I have built this house the best I know. God bless those that go in and out.”