"Why, there is nothing here!" she exclaimed. "There are no tents, no guns, no soldiers! Everything is gone! What does it mean?"
The answer was ready.
From afar in the forest, low down under the horizon's rim, came the sullen note of a great gun—a dull, sinister sound that seemed to roll across the Wilderness and hang over the log house and those within it.
Harley threw himself on the bed with a groan of grief and rage.
"Oh, God," he cried, "that I should be tied here on such a day!"
Helen ran to the window but saw nothing—only the waving grass, the somber forest and the blue skies and golden sunshine above. The echo of the cannon shot died and again there was silence, but only for a moment. The sinister note swelled up again from the point under the horizon's rim far off there to the left, and it was followed by another, and more and more, until they blended into one deep and sullen roar.
Unconsciously Constance Markham, the cynical, the worldly and the self-possessed, seized Helen Harley's hand in hers.
"The battle!" she cried. "It is the battle!"
"Yes," said Helen; "I knew that it was coming."
"Ah, our poor soldiers!"