Her brown eyes were on me, unabashed; by touch she was dividing the yellow masses of her hair into two equal parts. And now she slowly braided each to peg them for the night beneath her ruffled cap.
When she had braided and pegged her hair, she took the night-cap from her apron pocket and drew it over her golden head, tying the tabs under her chin.
"It is strange," she said with her wistful smile, "that, though the world is ending, we needs must waste in sleep a portion of what time remains to us.... And so I am for bed, John Drogue.... Lest that same tapping-jade come to your door tonight and waken me, also, with her loud knocking."
"Why do you say so? Have you news?"
"Did I not once foresee a battle in the North? And men in strange uniforms?"
"Yes," said I, smiling away the disappointment of a vague and momentary hope.
"I think that battle will happen very soon," she said gravely.
"You said that I should be there,—with that pale shadow in its shroud. Very well; only that I be given employment and live to see at least one battle, I care not whether I meet my weird in its winding-sheet. Because any man of spirit, and not a mouse, had rather meet his end that way than sink into dissolution in aged and toothless idleness."
"If you were not a very young and untried soldier," said she, "you would not permit impatience to ravage you and sour you as it does. And for me, too, it saddens and spoils our last few days together."
"Our last few days? You speak with a certainty—an authority——"