She had scarcely finished speaking, when a note was brought to the door. It was from Adam von Gelhorn.
"I am making my preparations to go at nine to-morrow," said the note. "Will you come to the church before? I would like to remember having seen you there last, at the organ. There's a bit of news just reached me, said to be a secret. General Edgar's command aims at preventing the junction of our forces before Y——. He is strong enough, numerically, to overthrow either division in separate conflict, and this is his Napoleonic strategy. But he will be outwitted. There's no doubt of it. Do not despair of our cause, whatever you hear during the coming fortnight. I shall report myself immediately to McClellan, and he may make a drummer-boy of me, if he will. Henceforth I am at his service till the war ends.
"Von G——."
Thrice she read this note; when her eyes lifted at last, Julius was still standing where she had left him. She started, seeing him, as if his presence there at the moment took a new significance; her heart fainted within her.
Had he heard this secret of which Von Gelhorn spoke? It was her husband's life that was in jeopardy!
"When are you going, Julius?" she asked.
"To-morrow. Oh, Madam, give me some word for him!"
Red horror of death, how it rises before her sight! She shuddered, cowered, sank before the blackness of darkness that followed fast on that terrific spectacle of carnage, before which a whirlwind seemed to have planted her. She heard the cries and yells, the groans and curses of bleeding, dying men; saw banners in the dust, horsemen and horses crushed under the great guns, mortality in fragments, heaps upon heaps of ruin on the field Aceldama.
Where was he? Who would search among the slain for him? Who from among the dying would rescue him? Who will stanch his bleeding wounds? Who will moisten his parched lips? Whose voice sound in the ears that have heard the roar of guns amid the crash of battle? What hand shall bathe and fan that brow? What eyes shall watch till those eyelids unlock, and catch the whisper of those lips? Nay, who will save his life from the needless sacrifice? tell him that his plans are known, warn him back, warn him of spies and of treachery? Has Julius betrayed him?
She looked at the slave. But before she looked, her heart reproached her for having doubted him.