She tried to find some way to draw him out, to help him. Whenever she found time, she went blackberry picking with him, and they would come home together, mouths purple, arms and faces scratched, tired enough to forget grief for another day. He tended the new colts Beau had sired. He helped Kate and Juanita enlarge the flower garden in the side yard, where they sometimes sat in the still evenings watching the last fat bees working against the summer's purple dusk.

No one went much to the crossroads now except Uncle Randolph. They stayed in their own world on the bluff, waiting for letters and the peddler, bringing the news. Jonathan wrote grimly of the destruction of Harpers Ferry before they abandoned it; of their first engagement at Falling Waters after Old Jack's First Brigade had destroyed all the rolling stock of the B + O Railroad. The men were restive, he wrote, ready to take the battle to the enemy as Jackson wished.

The peddler came bawling his wares and told them of the convention in Wheeling, Which had formed a new state government by declaring the government at Richmond in the east illegal because they were traitors. Dangling his gaudy trinkets before them, he told of the Rebel losses in the mountains, at Cheat and Rich mountains both, and the Federal march on Beverly.

``Cleaned all them Rebs out'n the hills, they did! They won't never git over inter loyal western Virginia, them traitors! The Federals is making everybody take the oath of loyalty around these parts too,'' he crowed.