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approaches his ruined plantation, he stumbles over a mob about to lynch a low-born local girl who’d turned to harlotry under the exigencies of war and had stooped to entertaining not just Yankees but “colored troops.”
    â€œWell, if we’re going to hang her,” Luther Battle had the maimed hero drawl, “we’re going to have to find someone who can make a proper noose.” So-and-so couldn’t do it, he went on, because he was busy running a pharmacy out of his farmhouse under a convenient draft exemption while brave men were dying at Lookout Mountain and Yellow Tavern. And such-and-such couldn’t either, because his son had deserted Pickett’s division and he’d helped the boy skedaddle to he wouldn’t swing for it; and thus-and-so had refused to sell oats and beans to the Confederate supply agents unless they came up with hard money, so he didn’t look like noose-making material either. And so on, with each tough in turn skulking away until the despairing whore found herself with no accuser but the one-armed officer himself.
    â€œI don’t hold with what you done,” he had informed her evenly, according to the manuscript. “But you know what you are, and you just have to live with that for the rest of your life. Just like I have to live with this empty sleeve. Your family was good people, so git back to your young ’uns and maybe some of the good in your blood will come out in them.”
    A bit derivative
, Melissa thought, then instantly reproached herself for the academic snideness. This was a story, not a PMLA article. She leaned back and let the gently lowering Kansas City sun warm her eyelids. Could you find God in a slaveholder? Could an arm left on some blood-soaked, godforsaken battlefield atone for one man’s share in the monstrous crime of human slavery? Could a man who’d fought and killed defending slavery redeem himself by standing Christ-like between a harlot and a mob? From the depths of her reverie, Melissa heard approaching steps and Linda’s voice.
    â€œThe newel capital looks great. How much longer for the glue to dry?”
    â€œAbout an hour,” Davidovich said, “but I only have to hang around another fifteen minutes or so to make sure the set has taken and there isn’t any bleeding through the seal.”
    â€œPerfect,” Linda said. “We don’t have to leave for another twenty minutes anyway. I’ll fix a salad to tide us over while we wait.”
    Melissa’s eyes snapped open.
    â€œAbbey Northanger,” she said.
    â€œExcuse me?” Linda said.
    â€œYour primly plucky heroine. Her name. It just came to me.”
    â€œOf course!” Linda said. “It’s perfect.”
    â€œZoom,” Davidovich said.
    â€œTell you what,” Melissa said as she stood up and tendered the first chapter of Luther Battle’s text to Linda. “I’ll fix the salad. You read this.”
    â€œRecess?” Linda asked, smiling uncertainly.
    â€œPenance.”

Chapter 7
    â€œHey trooper, where’s your mule?”
    â€œHalfway to Lawrence by now. I had to dismount and it turned out he could run faster than I could.”
    The half-dozen blue-clad men squatting around a small campfire chuckled at Rep’s answer. The one who’d asked the question rose and offered his hand. Muskets leaning against each other to form a teepee nearby confirmed even to Rep’s uneducated eyes that the man and his friends were infantry. Rep and Peter had already stowed their gear and grabbed a meal, and Peter had been showing Rep around for over an hour since. Peter, who seemed to know everyone at the encampment, introduced Rep around the circle.
    â€œHow long have you been in your unit?” one of the others asked.
    â€œAbout ten minutes,” Rep said, glancing at his bare left wrist before he remembered that Civil War cavalry privates didn’t wear