Weldon, riding on the other side, nodded to me in quiet content:
"Now all she lacked she may have, Renault," he said, smiling. "All will be well, thank God! Let her sleep!"
She heard him, watching me as I rode beside her.
"It was only you I lacked, Carus," she murmured dreamily; and, smiling, fell into a deep, sweet sleep.
Then, as we rode into the first outlying farms, men and women came to their gates, calling out to us in their Low Dutch jargon, and at first I scarce heeded them as I rode, so stunned with joy was I to see her sleeping there in the sunlight, and her white, cool skin and her mouth soft and moist.
Gun on gun shook the air with swift concussion. The pleasant Dutch bells swung aloft in mellow harmony. Suddenly, far behind where our infantry moved in column, I heard cheer on cheer burst forth, and the horns and fifes in joyous fanfare, echoed by the solid outbreak of the drums.
"What are they cheering for, mother?" I asked an old Dutch dame who waved her kerchief at us.
"For Willett and for George the Virginian, sir," she said, dimpling and dropping me a courtesy.
"George the Virginian?" I asked, wondering. "Do you mean his Excellency?"
And still she dimpled and nodded and bobbed her white starched cap, and I made nothing of what she said until I heard men shouting, "Yorktown!" and "The war ends! Hurrah!"