When the pipe was empty, he cleaned it and restored it to his pocket. This done, he routed out the side of the haversack devoted to apparel, comb, toothbrush, and—when he could get it—soap, together with other small articles. He had a little New Testament in which he conscientiously read at least once a week. Now he took this up. Between its pages lay an unopened letter. He uttered an exclamation. It had come to him at Fredericksburg, an hour before marching. He had had no time to read it then, and he had put it here. Then had come the breaking camp, the going ahead—he could hardly tell whether he had forgotten it or had simply taken up the notion that it had been read. He laughed. “Well, Aunt Sairy, it never happened before!” He opened it now, settled his shoulders squarely against the hickory, and read—
“Dear Allan:—It’s Tom’s turn to write, but he says I do it because his hand’s took to shaking so. The doctor says it’s just eagerness—he wants to know all the time and at the right identical minute what’s happening. And even the newspapers don’t know that, though Lord knows they think they do! But it’s just as bad to be sick with eagerness as to be sick with anything else. It’s sickness just the same as if it was typhoid or pleurisy. Yes, Allan, I’m anxious enough about Tom,—though, of course, I didn’t read that out to him. He’s sitting in the sunshine holding the toll-box, and there ain’t anything in it—and there never will be until you all stop this fool war. The doctor says—Yes, Tom!... Allan, you just straighten this letter out in your own head.”
Oh, it straightened out well enough in Allan’s head! He let the hand that held it drop upon the leaves, and he looked up the knife-blade ravine to where the green rim of the mountain touched the blue. He saw Thunder Run Mountain, and he heard, over the murmur of surrounding trees, the voice of Thunder Run. He saw with the inner eye the toll-house, the roses and the pansies and the bees. It was not going well with the toll-house—he knew that. Tom failing, and no toll taken, the county probably paying nothing.... Where was the money with which it could pay? Sairy fighting hard—he saw her slight, bent old figure—fighting hard now with this end, now with that, to make them meet. He knew they would never meet now, not while this war lasted. It was one of the bitter byproducts—that never meeting. There was nothing to send—he himself had had no pay this long while. Pay, in the Southern armies, was a vanishing quantity.
The wood blurred before Allan’s eyes. He sighed and took up the letter again.
“The school-house is most fallen down. They told me so, and I went up the Run one evening and looked at it. It’s so. It looked like a yearning ghost. Christianna tried to teach the children awhile this spring, but Christianna never was no bookworm. An’ then she had to do the spring ploughing, for Mrs. Maydew went down into the Valley to nurse the smallpox soldiers. Mrs. Cleave went, too, from Three Oaks. I haven’t got much of a garden this year, but the potatoes and sparrowgrass look fine. The wrens have built again in the porch. They’re company for Tom, now that there’s so little other company. He’s named the one Adam and the other Eve—Lord knows they’re wiser than some Adams and Eves I know!—Tom’s calling!—
“It wasn’t anything. He thought it was a wagon coming up the road. If this war don’t stop soon, some of us won’t be here to see it stop. And now he says if he just had a little something sweet to eat—and there ain’t no sugar nor nothing in the house!
“Lord sake, Allan, I didn’t mean to write like this! I know you’ve got your end to bear. Tom isn’t really so sick, and I’m jest as right as ever I was! The sun’s shining and the birds are singing, and the yellow cat’s stretching himself, and the gourd vine’s got a lot of flowers, and I bet you’d like to hear Thunder Run this minute! Steve Dagg’s still here and limping—when he thinks anybody’s looking. Rest of the time he uses both feet. He’s making up to Christianna Maydew—”
Allan’s hand closed on the paper. “Steve Dagg making up to Christianna Maydew! Why—damn him—” He was not a swearing man, but he swore now, rising from the ground to do so. He did not pause to analyze his feeling. A cool-blooded, quiet-natured man, he found himself suddenly wild with wrath. He with the balance of the Sixty-fifth had fully recognized Steve Dagg as the blot on their ’scutcheon—but personally, the blot had until now only amused and disgusted him. Quite suddenly he found the earth too small for both Allan Gold and Stephen Dagg.
Standing in the deep and narrow ravine and looking upward he had a vision. He saw Thunder Run Mountain, and high on the comb of it, the log house of the Maydews. He saw the ragged mountain garden sloping down, and the ragged mountain field. All about was a kind of violet mist. It parted and he saw Christianna standing in the doorway.
Allan Gold sat down upon a stone beside the brook. He leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging below his knees. The clear, dark water gave him back his face and form. He sat so, very still, for some minutes, then he drew a long, long breath. “I have been,” he said, “all kinds of a fool.”