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Fortunately, Darby’s illness took a better turn next day, and by sunset he was free from delirium.

Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills’s during these days any more than at Mrs. Stanley’s. Vashti was in a state of mind which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy. She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening, for Vashti had not mentioned Darby’s name. She kept his presence to herself, thinking that–thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat. Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself; and to all her mother’s questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx. For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill through the rain which still kept up–something was going on over there, but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day, she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something; she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley’s, even if she had wished to do so; for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side, and it was over her head in the current. She set off, therefore, up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way. She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening, and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things the men of the conscript guard she had seen. Vashti’s heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat. As she was so near she went on up to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass; but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them. They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way. Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot. When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district. Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the Federals. She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears; but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day. She admitted that she had never been on that road but once. And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp. She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby. Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her. She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it–she waded through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.