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of the border and looked across a meadow. Part of the MacBain house had been burned down. He had heard of it, but he had not seen it. Now it was plain. The east wing was grey and gaunt, a skeleton attached to the main house. Strange how crippled the house looked—like a man with his right arm withered! No, he was not going to let himself think about crippled men.
    He loosened the reins and went cantering over the meadow. He’d stop and see John MacBain. They had been good neighbors always, and their boyhood friendship had held.
    He tied his horse to the hitching post by the stile near the front door and then mounted the wide stone steps. The front door was open and he was about to shout when he heard his own name called.
    “Pierce Delaney—by Gawd!”
    It was John himself—By-Gawd MacBain, people called him.
    Pierce swung on his heel and saw him lying on a cot in the shadow of an ancient climbing rose that hung in festoons from the second story of the portico.
    “Why, John,” he exclaimed. “What’s damaged you?”
    “Sit down,” John said. His voice was still deep but the substance had gone out of it. It sounded hollow, as though it came from a cavern.
    “I hadn’t heard you were sick,” Pierce said. He sat down and laid his whip on the floor.
    “I’m not sick, I’m wounded,” John said. “Got a Yankee bullet in me.”
    “Can’t a doctor get it out?” Pierce asked.
    “Not to guarantee my life while he’s doin’ it,” John said.
    “But you can’t just lie there!” Pierce protested.
    “At least I’m alive,” John said. He gazed at Pierce from under the bushy red brows that gave ferocity to his deep-set grey eyes. “I aim to live,” he said doggedly.
    “Of course,” Pierce replied. His determination never again to think of the wounded failed him. Here was John, wounded for life! He knew the look of the desperately wounded, the secret hopelessness behind the eyes, the hidden knowledge of death. He looked away and over the meadow to Malvern.
    “Well, I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were, John,” he said at last.
    “Thank you kindly, Pierce. I hear Tom’s home.”
    “Starved nearly to death, John, but we’ll mend that as fast as we can.”
    “You can’t hardly blame our side for starving Yankees in jail when our own folks lived on dried beans and cornmeal,” John said. He stared up at the cobwebby ceiling of the portico. “You ’member my twin boys?”
    Pierce nodded. “Lucinda told me—”
    “They’re both dead,” John said. His hollow voice tolled the words. “No milk, no eggs—nothing they could eat, poor little fellers! Well, that leaves me alone with Molly.”
    “You’ll have more boys,” Pierce said.
    “Nope—I reckon not.”
    Pierce turned his head at the agony in John MacBain’s voice.
    “No more boys,” John said. “The Yankees got me there, Pierce.”
    “You mean—”
    “Yes.”
    Pierce felt the old insufferable weight in his breast. His chest grew tight when he was forced to face suffering. So often, when at the end of a day and the battle was over, he had scarcely been able to breathe when he had seen the rows of his men, the dead and the wounded, lying on the ground, waiting to be carried away. It had been his duty to see them, and he had done his duty.
    “John, if I knew what to say—”
    “There’s nothing to say, I reckon, Pierce. It’s my wife Molly I worry about. She’s still young.”
    They heard Molly’s clear voice at this moment. She was talking to someone, directing and scolding at the same time. Her skirts rustled and she was at the door, “John—” she began and saw the visitor. “Why, Pierce Delaney!” she cried. Her round pretty face lit and she put out both hands to him. “John and I were just wondering—how is that poor Tom?”
    “Nothing wrong except what some feeding will put right,” Pierce said. He felt her warm strong little hands in his and felt sorry for John MacBain and let them go.
    “Well, it’s