"'By nine o'clock we will have an answer to my message, Ellen.'
"I said then, 'When it comes, if it is "No," will you just say, "No, Ellen," and no more,—not one word more, please?'
"He said, 'I understand,' and went out.
"I heard him tell them not to disturb me; so I lay quite still, with my hands over my eyes. He kept pacing up and down as if he was anxious; then I heard a man's step coming towards him. I knew he brought the message. Captain Williams came towards the door; his wife was there waiting. I heard him speak to her, and then he said, 'You do it, Mary.' So she came in, and kissed me, and she said, 'He is gone, Ellen,'—no more but that. I knew then I never should see my brother again. Mrs. Williams cried, but I did not. She told me, after a while, that he had gone by another road to the Kanawha Salines, where they were fighting that day. 'You cannot go,' she said. 'It is a wilderness of hills and swamps. You must stay with us; help me with baby, and presently Joe will be back.'
"I did not say anything. I lay there, and covered my face. She thought I was asleep presently, so rose softly and went away. I lay quiet all day. I could not speak nor move. They brought me some wine, and talked to me, but I did not understand. I knew I must go on, go on!"—with the wild look again in her eyes. "They would not disturb me, but let me lie still all night there. Early in the morning, before day, I got up softly, softly, I was so afraid they would hear me, and made a light. I wanted to bid Joe farewell before I started."
"Where were you going, Ellen?"
"On, you know,"—with that grave, secretive look of the insane. "I had to go. So I made a light. I wanted to write a letter to my brother, but my head was so tired I could not; then I took my little Testament, and I marked the fourteenth chapter of St. John. He knew that I liked that best, and I thought that would be my letter. I wrote alongside of the printing, 'Good bye, Joe.' Then I fastened it up, and directed it to Joseph Carrol, Kanawha Salines."
"That was a wide direction, Ellen."
"Was it, Sir?" indifferently. "So Joe has it now. I think all his life he'll look at that, and say, 'That was Sis's last word.' I went gently out of the door, and I put my book in the post-office, and then I went away."
She began, it appears, to retrace her way on the railroad-track on foot, leaving her money and clothes at Mrs. Ford's, but carrying the little basket carefully. The Williamses, thinking she had followed Joe, searched for her in the direction of Grafton, and so failed to find her. There are no villages between Fetterman and Fairmount,—only scattered farm-houses, and but few of those,—the line of the railroad running between solitary stretches of moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning began again her plodding journey.