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fire, with his clothes torn and muddy where he had been hiding in swamps and bottoms from the Patrollers and with that look on his face again which resembled drunkenness but was not, as if he had not slept in a long time and did not want to sleep now, and Joby and Philadelphy leaning into the firelight and looking at him and Philadelphy's mouth open too and the same look on her face. Then I saw Louvinia standing in the door. We had not heard her behind us yet there she was, with one hand on the door jamb, looking at Loosh, and again she didn't have on Father's old hat.

'You mean they gwinter free us all?' Philadelphy .said.

'Yes,' Loosh said, loud, with his head flung back; he didn't even look at Joby when Joby said. 'Hush up, Loosh!' 'Yes!' Loosh said, 'Gin'ral Sherman gonter sweep the earth and the race gonter all be free!'

Then Louvinia crossed the floor hi two steps and hit Loosh across the head hard with her flat hand. 'You black fool!' she said. 'Do you think there's enough Yankees in the whole world to whip the white folks?' We ran to the house, we didn't wait for Louvinia; again we didn't know that she was behind us. We ran into the room where Granny was sitting beside the lamp with the Bible open on her lap and her neck arched to look at us across her spectacles. 'They're coming here!' I said. 'They're coming to set us free!' 'What?' she said.

'Loosh saw them! They're just down the road. It's General Sherman and he's going to make us all free!' And we watching her, waiting to see who she would send for to take down the musket—whether it would be Joby, because he was the oldest, or Loosh, because he had seen them and would know what to shoot at. Then she shouted, too, and her voice was strong and loud as Louvinia's:

'You Bayard Sartoris! Ain't you in bed yet? . . . Lou­vinia!' she shouted. Louvinia came in. 'Take these chil­dren up to bed, and if you hear another sound out of them tonight, you have my permission and my insistence, too, to whip them both.'

It didn't take us long to get to bed. But we couldn't

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talk, because Louvinia was going to bed on the cot in the hall. And Ringo was afraid to come up in the bed with me, so I got down on the pallet with him. 'We'll have to watch the road,' I said. Ringo whimpered.

'Look like hit haf to be us,' he said.

'Are you scared?'

'I ain't very,' he said. 'T just wish Marse John was here.'

'Well, he's not,' I said. 'It'll have to be us.'

We watched the road for two days, lying in the cedar copse. Now and then Louvinia hollered at us, but we told her where we were and that we were making an­other map, and besides, she could see the cedar copse from the kitchen. It was cool and shady there, and quiet, and Ringo slept most of the tune, and I slept some too. I was dreaming—it was like I was looking at our place and suddenly the house and stable and cabins and trees and all were gone and I was looking at a place flat and empty as the sideboard, and it was growing darker and darker, and then all of a sudden I wasn't looking at it; I was there—a sort of frightened drove of little tiny figures moving on it; they were Father and Granny and Joby and Louvinia and Loosh and Phila-delphy and Ringo and me—and then Ringo made a * choked sound and I was looking at the road, and there in the middle of it, sitting on a bright bay horse and looking at the house through a field glass, was a Yankee. For a long time we just lay there looking at him. I don't know what we had expected to see, but we knew what he was at once; I remember thinking, 'He looks just like a man,' and then Ringo and I were glaring at each other, and then we were crawling backward down the hill without remembering when we started to crawl, and then we were running across the pasture toward the house without remembering when we got to our feet. We seemed to run forever, with our heads back and our fists clenched, before we reached the fence and fell over it and ran on into the house. Granny's chair was empty beside the table where her sewing lay. 'Quick!' I said. 'Shove it up here!' But Ringo didn't move; his eyes looked like door knobs while I dragged the chair up and climbed onto it and began to lift

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29

down the musket. It weighed about fifteen pounds, though it was not the weight so much as the length; when it came free, it and the chair and all went down with a tremendous clatter. We heard Granny sit up in her bed upstairs, and then we heard her voice: 'Who is it?'

'Quick!' I said. 'Hurry!'

'I'm scared,' Ringo said.

'You, Bayard!' Granny said. . . . 'Louvinia!'

We held the musket between us like a log of wood. 'Do you want to be free?' I said. 'Do you want to be free?'

We carried it that way, like a log, one at each end, running. We ran through the grove toward the road and ducked down behind the honeysuckle just as the horse came around the curve. We didn't hear anything else, maybe because of our own breathing or maybe be­cause we were not expecting to hear anything else. We didn't look again either; we were too busy cocking the musket. We had practiced before, once or twice when Granny was not there and Joby would come in to ex­amine it and change the cap on the nipple. Ringo held it up and I took the barrel in both hands, high, and drew myself up and shut my legs about it and slid down over the hammer until it clicked. That's what we were doing, we were too busy to look; the musket was al­ready riding up across Ringo's back as he stooped, his hands on his knees and panting, 'Shoot the bastud! Shoot him!' and then the sights came level, and as I shut my eyes I saw the man and the bright horse vanish in smoke. It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brush fire, and I heard the horse scream, but I didn't see anything else; it was Ringo wailing, 'Great God, Bayard! Hit's the whole army!'

the house didn't seem to get any nearer; it just hung there in front of us, floating and increasing slowly in size, like something in a dream, and I could hear Ringo moaning behind me, and farther back still the shouts and the hoofs. But we reached the house at last; Louvinia

r

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THE UNVANQUISHED