"I'll stay right here," said the girl. She sat in the gloom and
listened to her mother's incessant moaning. When she attempted to move,
her mother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try to
alleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting in
passive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute to
her mother's relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes her
mother projected questions concerning the local condition, and although
she laboured to be graphic and at the same time soothing, unalarming,
her form of reply was always displeasing to the sick woman, and brought
forth ejaculations of angry impatience.

Eventually the woman slept in the manner of one worn from terrible
labour. The girl went slowly and softly to the kitchen. When she looked
from the window, she saw the four soldiers still at the barn door. In
the west, the sky was yellow. Some tree-trunks intersecting it appeared
black as streaks of ink. Soldiers hovered in blue clouds about the
bright splendour of the fires in the orchard. There were glimmers of
steel.

The girl sat in the new gloom of the kitchen and watched. The soldiers
lit a lantern and hung it in the barn. Its rays made the form of the
sentry seem gigantic. Horses whinnied from the orchard. There was a low
hum of human voices. Sometimes small detachments of troopers rode past
the front of the house. The girl heard the abrupt calls of sentries. She
fetched some food and ate it from her hand, standing by the window. She
was so afraid that something would occur that she barely left her post
for an instant.

A picture of the interior of the barn hung vividly in her mind. She