DICK was right. Kilgariff read nearly all night, and finished Evelyn’s book in the small hours of the morning. Then he slept more calmly than he had done at any time during recent weeks.
At six o’clock he went to the kitchen and negotiated with Aunt Kizzey, the cook, for an immediate cup of coffee. Then he mounted the war-horse that had brought him to Wyanoke—sleek and strong, now, and full of gallop—and set off for Warlock plantation.
When he got there, the nine o’clock breakfast was just ready, but he had luckily met Evelyn in a strip of woodland, where she was walking in spite of the snow that lay ankle-deep upon the ground. Dismounting, he said to her:—
“I have read your book from beginning to end, Evelyn. I have come now for your answer to my question.”
“What question?” she asked, less frankly than was her custom.
“Will you be my wife?”
“Yes—gladly,” she said, “if my story makes no difference.”
“It makes a great difference,” he responded. “It tells me, as nothing else could, what a woman you are. It intensifies my love, and my resolution to make all the rest of your life an atonement to you for the suffering you have endured.”
The next day Evelyn cut short her visit to Warlock and returned to Wyanoke. At the same time Kilgariff went back to Petersburg to bear his part in the closing scenes of the greatest war of all time.
Grant was already in possession of the Weldon Railroad. With his limitless numbers, he had been able to stretch his line southward and westward until his advance threatened the cutting off of the two other railroads that constituted Richmond’s only remaining lines of communication southward. Lee’s small force, without hope of reinforcement, had been stretched out into a line so long and so thin that at many points the men holding the works stood fully a dozen yards apart.