In the laugh that followed, it would seem that Brant’s eulogy had been spoken and forgotten.  But as Lieutenant Martin was turning away, a lingering corporal touched his cap.

“You were speaking of those prowling mulattoes, sir.  You know the general passed one out this morning.”

“So I have heard.”

“I reckon she didn’t get very far.  It was just at the time that we were driven in by their first fire, and I think she got her share of it, too.  Do you mind walking this way, sir!”

The lieutenant did not mind, although he rather languidly followed.  When they had reached the top of the gully, the corporal pointed to what seemed to be a bit of striped calico hanging on a thorn bush in the ravine.

“That’s her,” said the corporal.  “I know the dress; I was on guard when she was passed.  The searchers, who were picking up our men, haven’t got to her yet; but she ain’t moved or stirred these two hours.  Would you like to go down and see her?”

The lieutenant hesitated.  He was young, and slightly fastidious as to unnecessary unpleasantness.  He believed he would wait until the searchers brought her up, when the corporal might call him.

The mist came up gloriously from the swamp like a golden halo.  And as Clarence Brant, already forgotten, rode moodily through it towards Washington, hugging to his heart the solitary comfort of his great sacrifice, his wife, Alice Brant, for whom he had made it, was lying in the ravine, dead and uncared for.  Perhaps it was part of the inconsistency of her sex that she was pierced with the bullets of those she had loved, and was wearing the garments of the race that she had wronged.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

It was sunset of a hot day at Washington.  Even at that hour the broad avenues, which diverged from the Capitol like the rays of another sun, were fierce and glittering.  The sterile distances between glowed more cruelly than ever, and pedestrians, keeping in the scant shade, hesitated on the curbstones before plunging into the Sahara-like waste of crossings.  The city seemed deserted.  Even that vast army of contractors, speculators, place-hunters, and lobbyists, which hung on the heels of the other army, and had turned this pacific camp of the nation into a battlefield of ignoble conflict and contention—­more disastrous than the one to the South—­had slunk into their holes in hotel back bedrooms, in shady barrooms, or in the negro quarters of Georgetown, as if the majestic, white-robed Goddess enthroned upon the dome of the Capitol had at last descended among them and was smiting to right and left with the flat and flash of her insufferable sword.