In less time than that taken by well-appointed kitchens to furnish "Hot Meals to Order" the four were sitting on their blankets around a comfortable fire of rails and cedar logs, eating hard bread and broiled fat pork, and drinking strong black coffee, which the magic of the open air had trans.m.u.ted into delightfully delicate and relishable viands.

"You are indebted to me," said Dr. Denslow, as he finished the last crumb and drop of his portion of the food, "for the accession to your company at this needful time, of a tower of strength in the person of Lieutenant Jacob Alspaugh."

Abe groaned; the Doctor looked at him with well-feigned astonishment, and continued:

"That gore-hungry patriot, as you know, has been home several months on recruiting duty, by virtue of a certificate which he wheedled out of old Moxon. At last, when he couldn't keep away any longer, he started back, but he carefully restrained his natural impetuosity in rushing to the tented field, and his journey from Sardis to Nashville was a fine specimen of easy deliberation. There was not a sign of ungentlemanly hurry in any part of it. He came into my ward at Nashville with violent symptoms of a half-dozen speedily fatal diseases. I was cruel enough to see a coincidence in this attack and the general marching orders, and I prescribed for his ailments a thorough course of open air exercise. To be sure that my prescription would be taken I had the Provost-Marshal interest himself in my patient's case, and the result was that Alspaugh joined the regiment, and so far has found it difficult to get away from it. It's the unexpected that happens, the French say, and there is a bare possibility that he may do the country some service by the accidental discharge of his duty."

"The possibility is too remote to waste time considering," said Harry.

They lay down together upon a bed made by spreading their overcoats and blankets upon the springy cedar boughts, and all but Harry were soon fast asleep. Though fully as weary as they he could not sleep for hours.

He was dominated by a feeling that a crisis in his fate was at hand, and as he lay and looked at the stars every possible shape that that fate could take drifted across his mind, even as the endlessly-varying cloud-shapes swept--now languidly, now hurriedly--across the domed sky above him. And as the moon and the stars shone through or around each of the clouds, making the lighter ones ma.s.ses of translucent glory, and gilding the edges of even the blackest with silvery promise, so the thoughts of Rachel Bond suffused with some brightness every possible happening to him. If he achieved anything the achievement would have for its chief value that it won her commendation; if he fell, the blackness of death would be gilded by her knowledge that he died a brave man's death for her sweet sake.

He listened awhile to the mournful whinny of the mules; to the sound of artillery rolling up the resonant pike; to the crashing of newly-arrived regiments through the cedars as they made their camps in line-of-battle; to little spurts of firing between the nervous pickets, and at last fell asleep to dream that he was returning to Sardis, maimed but honor-crowned, to claim Rachel as his exultant bride.

The Christmas forenoon was quite well-advanced before the fatigue of Rachel Bond's long ride was sufficiently abated to allow her to awaken.

Then a soft hum of voices impressed itself upon her drowsy senses, and she opened her eyes with the idea that there were several persons in the room engaged in conversation. But she saw that there was only Aunt Debby, seated in a low rocking-chair by the lazily burning fire, and reading aloud from a large Bible that lay open upon her knees. The reading was slow and difficult, as of one but little used to it, and many of the longer words were patiently spelled out. But this labored picking the way along the rugged path of knowledge, stumbling and halting at the nouns, and verbs, and surmounting the polysyllables a letter at a time, seemed to give the reader a deeper feeling of the value and meaning of each word, than is usually gained by the more facile scholar. As Rachel listened she became aware that Aunt Debby was reading that wonderful twelfth chapter of St. Luke, richest of all chapters in hopes and promises and loving counsel for the lowly and oppressed. She had reached the thirty-fifth verse, and read onward with a pa.s.sionate earnestness and understanding that made every word have a new revelation to Rachel:

"Let your loins be girded up, and your lights burning;

"And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately.

"Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

"And if ye shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and shall find them so, blessed are those servants.

"And this now that if the good man of the house had known what the hour the thief would come he would have watched, and not suffered his house to be broken through.

"Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not."

Rachel stirred a little, and Aunt Debby looked up and closed the book.

"I'm afeared I've roused ye up too soon," she said, coming toward the bed with a look of real concern upon her sad, sweet face. "I raylly didn't intend ter. I jest opened the book ter read teh promise 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot, an' read on; an' when I read, I must read out loud, ter git the good of hit. Some folks pretend they kin understand jest ez well when they read ter themselves. Mebbe they kin."

"O, no," replied Rachel cheerfully, "you didn't disturb me in the least.

It was time that I got up, and I was glad to hear you read. I'm only troubled with the fear that I've overslept myself, and missed the duty that I was intended for."

"Make yourself easy on that 'ere score. Ye'll not be needed to-day, nor likely to-morrow. Some things hev come up ter change Jim's plans."

"I am very sorry," said Rachel, sitting up in the bed and tossing back her long, silken mane with a single quick, masterful motion. "I wished to go immediately about what I am expected to do. I can do anything better than wait."

Aunt Debby came impulsively to the bedside, threw an arm around Rachel's neck, and kissed her on the forehead. "I love ye, honey," she said with admiring tenderness. "Ye' 're sich ez all women orter be. Ye 'll make heroes of yer husband and sons. Ye 've yit ter l'arn though, thet the most of a woman's life, an' the hardest part of hit, is ter wait."

In her fervid state of mind Rachel responded electrically to this loving advance, made at the moment of all others when she felt most in need of sympathy and love. She put her strong arms around Aunt Debby, and held her for a moment close to her heart. From that moment the two women became of one accord. Womanlike, they sought relief from their high tension in light, irrelevant talk and care for the trifling details of their surroundings. Aunt Debby brought water and towels for Rachel's toilet, and fluttered around her, solicitous, helpful and motherly, and Rachel, weary of long companionship with men, delighted in the restfulness of a.s.sociation once more with a gentle, sweet-minded woman.

The heavy riding-habit was entirely too c.u.mbersome for indoor wear, and Rachel put on instead one of Aunt Debby's "linsey" gowns, that hung from a peg, and laughed at the prim, demure mountain girl she saw in the gla.s.s. After a good breakfast had still farther raised her spirits she ventured upon a little pleasantry about the dramatic possibilities of a young lady who could a.s.sume different characters with such facility.

The day pa.s.sed quietly, with Rachel studying such of the Christmas festivities as were visible from the window, and from time to time exchanging personal history with Aunt Debby. She learned that the latter had left her home in Rockcastle Mountains with the Union Army in the previous Spring, and gone on to Chattanooga, to a.s.sist her nephew, Fortner, in obtaining the required information when Mitch.e.l.l's army advanced against that place in the Summer. When the army retreated to the Ohio, in September, she had come as far back as Murfreesboro, and there stopped to await the army's return, which she was confident would not be long delayed.

"How brave and devoted you have been," said Rachel warmly, as Aunt Debby concluded her modestly-told story. "No man could have done better."

"No, honey," replied the elder woman, with her wan face coloring faintly, "I've done nothin' but my plain duty, ez I seed hit. I've done nothin' ter what THEY would've done had n't they been taken from me afore they had a chance. Like one who speaks ter us in the Book, I've been in journeyin's often, in peril of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness an' painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger an' thirst, in fastings often, in cold an' nakedness, but he warns us not ter glory in these things, but in those which consarn our infirmities."

"How great should be your reward!"

"Don't speak of reward. I only want my freedom when I've 'arned hit--the freedom ter leave an 'arth on which I've been left behind, an' go whar my husband an' son are waitin' fur me."

She rose and paced the floor, with her face and eyes shining.

"Have you no fear of death whatever?" asked Rachel in amazement.

"Fear of death! Child, why should I fear death? Why should I fear death, more than the unborn child fears birth? Both are the same. Hit can't be fur ter thet other world whar THEY wait fur me. Hit is not even ez a journey ter the next town--hit's only one little step though the curtain o' green gra.s.s an' violets on a sunny hillside--only one little step."

She turned abruptly, and going back to her chair by the fireside, seated herself in it, and clasping her knees with her hands, rocked back and forth, and sang in a low, sweet croon:

"Oh, the rapturous, transporting scene, That rises ter my sight; Sweet fields arrayed in livin' green, An' rivers of delight.

"All o'er those wide, extended plains Shines one eternal day; Thar G.o.d, the Son, forever reigns, An scatters night away.

"No chillin' winds or poisonous breath Kin reach thet healthful sh.o.r.e; Sickness an' sorrow, pain an' death, Are felt an' feared no more."

After dark Fortner came in. Both women studied his face eagerly as he walked up to the fire.

"Nothin' yet, honey," he said to Aunt Debby, and "Nothin' yet, Miss," to Rachel, and after a little stay went out.

When Rachel awoke the next morning the sky was lowering darkly. On going to the window she found a most depressing change from the scene of bright merriment she had studied the night before. A chill Winter rain was falling with dreary persistence, pattering on the dead leaves that covered the ground, and soaking into the sodden earth. A few forlorn little birds hopped wearily about, searching in vain in the dry husks and empty insect sh.e.l.ls for the food that had once been so plentiful there. Up and down the streets, as far as she could see, men in squads or singly, under officers or without organization, plodded along dejectedly, taking the cold drench from above, and the clinging mud around their feet, with the dumb, stolid discontent characteristic of seasoned veterans. When mules and horses went by they seemed poor and shrunken. They drew their limbs and bodies together, as if to present the least surface to the inclement showers, and their labored, toilsome motion contrasted painfully with their strong, free movement on brighter days. Everything and everybody in sight added something to increase the dismalness of the view, and as Rachel continued to gaze upon it the "horrors" took possession of her. She began to brood wretchedly over her position as a spy inside the enemy's lines, and upon all the consequences of that position.

It was late that night when Fortner came in. As he entered the two expectant women saw, by the ruddy light of the fire, that his face was set and his eyes flashing. He hung his dripping hat on a peg in the chimney, and kicked the blazing logs with his wet boots until a flood of meteor sparks flew up the throat of the fireplace. Turning, he said, without waiting to be questioned:

"Well, the hunt's begun at last. Our folks came out'n Nashville this morning in three big armies, marchin' on different roads, an they begun slashin' at the Rebels wherever they could find 'em. Thar's been fouten at Triune an' Lavergne, an' all along the line. They histed the Rebels out'n ther holes everywhar, an' druv' em back on the jump. Wagon load arter wagon load o' wounded's comin' back. I come in ahead of a long train agwine ter the hospital. Hark! ye kin heah 'em now."

The women listened.

They heard the ceaseless patter and swish of the gloomy rain--the gusty sighs of the wind through the shade-trees' naked branches--louder still the rolling of heavy wheels over the rough streets; and all these were torn and rent by the shrieks of men in agony.

"Poor fellows," said Rachel, "how they are suffering!"

"Think ruther," said Aunt Debby calmly, "of how they've made others suffer. Hit's G.o.d's judgement on 'em."

Rachel turned to Fortner. "What will come next? Will this end it? Will the Rebels fall back and leave this place?"

"Hardly. This's on'y like the fust slap in the face in a fight atween two big savage men, who've locked horns ter see which is the best man.

Hit's on'y a sorter limberin' the jints fur the death ra.s.sel."