She knew them at once despite the shadows of the trees and the faint moonlight--and it was what her thoughts had told her would come true. It had never occurred to her that the one who sat in the saddle so erect and so powerful could fall; nor had he.
She and Mrs. Markham advanced to meet them. Harley's head swayed slightly from side to side, and his clothing showed red in the dim moonlight. Wood held him in the saddle with one hand and guided the two horses with the other. Both women were white to the lips, but it was Helen who spoke first.
Wood replied that Harley was not hurt save by exhaustion from his previous wounds. He had come, too, at a critical moment, and his coming had been worth much to the South. But now he was half unconscious; he must rest or die. The General spoke in simple words, language that one would have called dialect, but Helen did not think of those things; his figure was grander than ever before to her, because, despite the battle, he had remembered to bring back her brother.
Mrs. Markham was quiet, saying no word, but she went with them to the house, where Harley was placed on the very bed on which he had slept the night before. Lucia Catherwood did not turn back, and was left alone on the field, but she was neither afraid nor lonely. She, too, was looking for some one--one whom she was in dread lest she find and whom she wished to find nevertheless. But she had a feeling--how or whence it came she did not know--that she would find him there. Always while she helped the others, hour after hour, she looked for him, glancing into every ravine and hollow, and neglecting no thicket or clump of bushes that she passed. She believed that she would know him if she saw but the edge of his coat or his hand.
At last she reached the fringe of the battlefield. The fallen forms were fewer and the ground less torn by the tramplings of men and horses and the wheels of guns, though the storm had passed, leaving its track of ruin. Here, too, were burned spots, the grass still smouldering and sending up tiny sparks, a tree or two twisted out of shape and half-consumed by flames; a broken cannon, emblem of destruction, lying wheelless on the ground. Lucia looked back toward the more populous field of the fallen and saw there the dim lights still moving, but decreasing now as the night waned. Low, blurred sounds came to her ears. As for herself, she stood in the darkness, silvered dimly by a faint moonlight, a tall, lithe young figure, self-reliant, unafraid.