All at once everything came. War, persecution, estrangement, love, death, all those things most moving in human life. She looked at the letter addressed to her in Neville’s firm handwriting, and knew well enough what it meant—it was what she was to do in the event of his death; but like most young creatures brimming with life, Angela could scarcely believe in death. It seemed to her an anachronism so frightful as to be almost incredible.
When the carriage reached once more the public road there was, even to Angela’s untrained eyes, every sign of approaching battle. A great, dark blue stream, with glittering muskets which the dying sun tipped with fire, poured along the highroad. Officers were riding at a steady pace with their commands, while constantly orderlies dashed back and forth, silent, grimly concentrated upon their errands.
Over the quiet autumn landscape, which should have been all peace, brooded the spirit of coming battle. The red sun itself seemed to Angela’s mind a great bloody disk dropping behind the dreary woods. How many of these men marching cheerfully along would live to see another sun set?
Suddenly a sound, distant but unmistakable, smote Angela’s ear—the reverberation across the distant hills and far-off wide river of heavy guns. Angela had never before in her life heard a cannon fired, but that menacing thunder, that wolfish howl before the banquet of death begins, could not be misunderstood. Angela felt a sensation of horror, but nothing like fear; she came of good fighting stock, and the thought of battle did not intimidate her. Then the far-off roar was overborne by a loud, quick crashing of guns within half the distance. Instantly the thrill of conflict seemed to animate the long blue line, and there were a few quick evolutions, like a lion crouching before his spring.
Farley, who had been leaning forward listening intently, took the whip out of the hands of the soldier-driver and laid it heavily on the mules, and they sprang ahead. Then turning to Angela, sitting upright within the carriage, and now fully awake to all that was going on around her, he said:
“Pray, don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Tremaine. I can get you to the farmhouse within an hour, where you will be quite safe and out of danger.”
“Don’t disturb yourself on my account,” replied Angela. “I only regret that I am giving you trouble when I am sure you wish to be with your command.”
As she spoke, the soldier-driver, with the familiarity of the volunteer, glancing back at her, said to Farley, above the rattle of the rickety carriage: “I don’t believe she is afeered, but it’s more ’an some of them fellows on both sides can say.”
Angela said no more, but watched with a fast-beating heart what seemed to be tumult passing before her, but was really expedition and apparent confusion which meant order.
In a little while the carriage struck off from the highroad and passed into a region all quietude and peace. The distant roar of the guns stopped for a time, and the intervening hill and valley shut off the sounds of the marching troops. The red sun was gone and the short, enchanted autumn twilight had fallen. When the carriage drew up at the door of the farmhouse Angela, when Farley had assisted her to alight, said: “I think that I should now release you from your kind attendance on me. Captain Tremaine directed me to remain here until I should hear from him. I shan’t need any protection, and I beg that you will feel no hesitation in leaving me.”