“We reached Ivor late that afternoon, my driver got his fee and departed, and Bobby and I were left to wait for the train. But we were not the only persons at the station; two other women were waiting at Ivor. If those two women could have had their way there would never have been another sunset on this earth. Their two sons were to be shot at sundown--they were watching for the sun to go down. Up and down, up and down, they walked in front of a tent where their sons under military guard awaited execution, and as they walked their eyes, swift and haggard, shifted from tent to sky and back again from sky to tent. As my train moved out of the station I glanced back. They were walking with feverish haste, and the sun hung low in the heavens.”
“Hush, hush!” I cried, “I can’t stand another word--I shall dream of those women all night. Tell me how you got here at last!”
“When I reached Pocahontas I meant to go to Jarrett’s, and stop until I could find out where you were, but while I was looking around for a carriage who should I come upon but John, our old hackman. He told me that you were both out here at Uncle William’s, and I made him drive me out.”
Soon after my sister’s arrival we moved into town and boarded at Miss Anne Walker’s, an old historic house then facing Washington Street, which runs east and west, paralleling the railroad at Jarrett’s Hotel--or rather where Jarrett’s used to stand--an ugly old hotel in the heart of the town. It was beside this railroad that I ran bareheaded along Washington Street some months later to get out of the way of the Yankee cannon. I was at Miss Anne’s when Dan gave me leave to visit him at Charlottesville. His headquarters was a small cottage in sight of the university and of my window. He came home every night--home was a student’s room in the university--and very often I went with him in the morning to his cottage.
One morning as I sat in the cottage, turning a pair of Dan’s old trousers, the door opened, and a fine-looking cavalry officer entered. Surprised to find a lady in occupation, he lifted his hat and started to withdraw. Then he hesitated, regarding me in a confused, doubtful fashion. Whereupon I in my turn began to stare at him.