Miriam clasped her thin brown hands about her knee, rested her chin on them, and fastened her great brown eyes on the distant battle cloud. Christianna, her sunbonnet pushed back, looked too, with limpid, awe-struck gaze. Were Pap and Dave and Billy fighting in that cloud? It was thicker than the morning mist in the hollow below Thunder Run Mountain, and it was not fleecy, pure, and white. It was yellowish, fierce, and ugly, and the sound that came from it made her heart beat thick and hard. Was he there—Was Allan Gold there in the cloud? She felt that she could not sit still; she wished to walk toward it. That being impossible, she began to make a little moaning sound. A woman in black, sitting on the grass near her, looked across. "Don't!" she said. "If you do that, all of us will do it. We've got to keep calm. If we let go, it would be like Rachel weeping. Try to be quiet."
Christianna, who had moaned as she crooned, hardly knowing it, at once fell silent. Another woman spoke to her. "Would you mind holding my baby? My head aches so. I must lie down here on the grass, just a minute." Christianna took the baby. She handled it skilfully, and it was presently cooing against her breast. Were Pap and Dave over there, shooting and cutting? And Billy—Billy with a gun now instead of the spear the blacksmith had made him? And Allan Gold was not teaching in the schoolhouse on Thunder Run....
The woman took the baby back. The sun blazed down, there came a louder burst of sound. A man with a field-glass, standing near, uttered a "Tchk!" of despair. "Impenetrable curtain! The ancients managed things better—they did not fight in a fog!"
He seemed a person having authority, and the people immediately about him appealed for information. He looked through the glass and gave it, and was good, too, about lending the glass. "It's A. P. Hill, I'm sure—with Longstreet to support him. It's A. P. Hill's brigades that are moving into the smoke. Most of that firing is from our batteries along the Chickahominy. We are going undoubtedly to cross to the north bank—Yes. McClellan's right wing—Fitz John Porter—A good soldier—Oh, he'll have about twenty-five thousand men."
A boy, breathing excitement from top to toe, sent up a shrill voice. "Isn't Jackson coming, sir? Aren't they looking for Jackson?"
The soldier who had drunk the milk was discovered by Miriam and Christianna, near their tree. He gave his voice. "Surely! He'll have come down from Ashland and A. P. Hill is crossing here. That's an army north, and a big lot of troops south, and Fitz John Porter is between like a nut in a nut cracker. The cracker has only to work all right, and crush goes the filbert!" He raised himself and peered under puckered brows at the smoke-draped horizon. "Yes, he's surely over there—Stonewall.—Going to flank Fitz John Porter—Then we'll hear a hell of a fuss."
"There's a battery galloping to the front," said the man with the glass. "Look, one of you! Wipe the glass; it gets misty. If it's the Purcell, I've got two sons—"
The soldier took the glass, turning it deftly with one hand. "Yes, think it is the Purcell. Don't you worry, sir! They're all right. Artillerymen are hard to kill—That's Pender's brigade going now—"
Christianna clutched Miriam. "Look! look! Oh, what is it?"
It soared into the blue, above the smoke. The sunlight struck it and it became a beautiful iridescent bubble, large as the moon. "Oh, oh!" cried the boy. "Look at the balloon!"