now at the house? It mattered nothing to him.

He went across the cornfield to the church, his thin coat flapping in
the wind, looking at his rusty pistol with a shudder.

* * * * *


Dode shut the door. Outside lay the winter's night, snow, death, the
war. She shivered, shut them out. None of her nerves enjoyed pain, as
some women's do. Inside,--you call it cheap and mean, this room? Yet her
father called it Dode's snuggery; he thought no little nest in the world
was so clean and warm. He never forgot to leave his pipe outside,
(though she coaxed him not to do it,) for fear of "silin' the air."
Every evening he came in after he had put on his green dressing-gown and
slippers, and she read the paper to him. It was quite a different hour
of the day from all of the rest: sitting, looking stealthily around
while she read, delighted to see how cozy he had made his little
girl,--how pure the pearl-stained walls were, how white the matting. He
never went down to Wheeling with the crops without bringing something
back for the room, stinting himself to do it. Her brother had had the
habit, too, since he was a boy, of bringing everything pretty or
pleasant he found to his sister; he had a fancy that he was making her
life bigger and more heartsome by it, and would have it all right after
a while. So it ended, you see, that everything in the room had a meaning
for the girl,--so many mile-stones in her father and Geordy's lives.
Besides, though Dode was no artist, had not what you call taste, other
than in being clean, yet every common thing the girl touched seemed to
catch her strong, soft vitality, and grow alive. Bone had bestowed upon
her the antlers of a deer which he had killed,--the one great trophy of