Mark Rivers resumed his duties for a time, unwilling to abandon these dear friends for whom McGregor, puzzled and perplexed, had no word of consolation, except the assurance that his condition did not grow worse.

At times Penhallow was dimly aware of his state; at others he resented any effort to control him and was so angry when the doctor proposed a consultation that the idea was too easily given up, for always in this as in everything his wife agreed with him and indulged him as women indulge a sick child.  The village grieved for the Colonel who rode no more through Westways with a gay word of greeting for all he met.  The iron-mills were busy.  The great guns tested on the meadows now and then shook the panes in the western windows of Grey Pine.  They no longer disturbed Ann Penhallow.  The war went its thunderous way unheeded by her.  Unendingly hopeful, the oppression of disaster seemed only to confirm and strengthen her finest qualities.  Like the pine-tree winning vigour from its rock-clasped roots, she gathered such hardening strength of soul and body from his condition as the more happy years had never put at her command.

“No letters to-day, Miss Leila,” said the post-mistress standing beside the younger woman’s horse.  “Just only them papers with their lists of killed and wounded.”

“I must always be Leila, not Miss Leila,” said the horsewoman.

“Well—­well—­I like that better.  How’s the Colonel?”

“Much the same—­certainly no worse.  It is wonderful how my aunt stands it.”

“Don’t you notice, Leila, how she has kind of softened?  Me and Joe was talking of it yesterday.  She always was good, but folks did use to say she was sort of hard and—­positive.  Now, she’s kind of gentled—­noticed that?”

“Yes, I have noticed it; but I must go.  Give me the papers.  You love a talk.”

“There’s no news of John?”

“None of late.  He is with General Grant—­but where we do not know.”

“It’s right pleasant to have Josiah back.  Lord! but he’s strong on war stories—­ought to hear him.  He was always good at stories.”

“Yes, I suppose so.  Good-bye.”

James Penhallow sat on the back porch in the after luncheon hour to get with the freshness of October what sunshine the westerning sun was sifting through the red and gold of the maples beyond the garden walls.  He was in the undress uniform of the artillery, and still wore the trefoil of the Second Corps.  An effort by Ann to remove his soiled army garb and substitute his lay dress caused an outbreak of anger which left him speechless and feeble, and her in an agony of regretful penitence.  Josiah, wiser than she, ventured to tell her what had happened once before when his badge of the glorious Second Corps had been missing.  “After all, what does it matter?” she said to herself, and made no effort to repair the ragged bullet tear South Mountain left in his jacket, and in which he had at his worst times such childlike pride as in another and well-known general had once amused him.