As they rose from the table, she slipped her arm through her father’s and went with him into the hall.

“I’m tired,” she said, stopping him on his way to the sitting-room, “so I’ll go to bed.”

The general held her from him and looked into her face.

“Anybody been troubling you, Eugie?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You dear old goose—­no!”

He patted her shoulder reassuringly.

“If anybody troubles you, you just let me hear of it,” he said.  “They’ll find out Tom Battle wasn’t at Appomattox.  You’ve got an old father and he’s got an old sword—­”

“And he’s hungry for a fight,” she gaily finished.  Then she rubbed her cheek against his brown linen sleeve, which was redolent of tobacco.  The firm physical contact inspired her with the courage of life; it seemed to make for her a bulwark against the world and its incoming tribulations.

She threw back her head and looked up into the puffed and scarlet face where the coarse veins were congested, her eyes seeing only the love which transfigured it.  She was his pet and his pride, and she would always be the final reward of his long life.

As she mounted the stairs, he blew his nose and called cheerfully after her: 

“Just remember, if anybody begins plaguing you, that I’m ready for him—­the rascal.”

Once in her room she threw open the window and sat looking out into the night, the chill autumn wind in her face.  Far across the fields a pale moon was rising, bearing a cloudy circle that betokened rain.  It flung long, ghostly shadows east and west, which flitted, lean and noiseless and black, before the wind.  Overhead the stars shone dimly, piercing a fine mist.  Eugenia leaned forward, her chin on her clasped hands.  Beyond the gray blur of the pasture she could see, like benighted beacons, the lights in Amos Burr’s windows, and she found herself vaguely wondering if Nicholas were at his books—­those books that never failed him.  He had that consolation at least—­his books were more to him than she had been.

She was not conscious of anger; she felt only an indifferent weariness—­a nervous shrinking from the brutality of his rage.  His face as she had seen it rose suddenly before her, and she put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the sight.  She saw the clear streak of the highway, the gray pasture, the solitary star overhanging the horizon, and she felt the dead leaves blown against her cheek from denuded trees far distant.  And lighted by a glare of memory she saw his face—­she saw the convulsed features, the furrow that cleft the forehead like a seam, the heavy brows bent above the half-closed eyes, the spasmodic working of the drawn mouth.  She saw the man in whom, for its brief instant, evil was triumphant—­in whom that self-poise, which had been to her as the secret of his strength, was tumultuously overthrown.

A great fatigue weighed upon her, as if she had emerged, defeated, from a physical contest.  Her hands trembled, and something throbbed in her temple like an imprisoned bird.