Evelyn Byrd

THIS book is the third and last of a trilogy of romances. In that trilogy I have endeavoured to show forth the character of the Virginians—men and women.

In “Dorothy South” I tried to show what the Virginians were while the old life lasted—“before the war.”

_In “The Master of Warlock” I endeavoured faithfully to depict the same people as they were during the first half of the Civil War, when their valour seemed to promise everything of results that they desired. In “Evelyn Byrd” I have sought to show the heroism of endurance that marked the conduct of those people during the last half of the war, when disaster stared them in the face and they unfalteringly confronted it._

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A STRICKEN CORSAGE 9

II. OWEN KILGARIFF 29

III. EVELYN BYRD 50

IV. THE LETTING DOWN OF THE BARS 59

V. DOROTHY’S OPINIONS 70

VI. “WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK” 79

VII. WITH EVELYN AT WYANOKE 102

VIII. SOME REVELATIONS OF EVELYN 118

IX. THE GREAT WAR GAME 144

X. THE LAW OF LOVE 152

XI. ORDERS AND “NO NONSENSE” 167

XII. SAFE-CONDUCT OF TWO KINDS 178

XIII. KILGARIFF HEARS NEWS 185

XIV. IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 210

XV. IN THE TRENCHES 216

XVI. THE STARVING TIME 224

XVII. A GUN-PIT CONFERENCE 242

XVIII. EVELYN’S REVELATION 269

XIX. DOROTHY’S DECISION 277

XX. A MAN, A MAID, AND A HORSE 283

XXI. EVELYN LIFTS A CORNER OF THE CURTAIN 294

XXII. ALONE IN THE PORCH 302

XXIII. A LESSON FROM DOROTHY 318

XXIV. EVELYN’S BOOK 327

XXV. MORE OF EVELYN’S BOOK 345

XXVI. EVELYN’S BOOK, CONTINUED 370

XXVII. KILGARIFF’S PERPLEXITY 386

XXVIII. EVELYN’S BOOK, CONCLUDED 390

XXIX. EVELYN’S VIGIL 418

XXX. BEFORE A HICKORY FIRE 424

XXXI. THE LAST FLIGHT OF EVELYN 432

XXXII. THE END OF IT ALL 434

ILLUSTRATIONS

“I already know what is in the papers” Frontispiece

PAGE

“Who are you?” 89

“I may stroke his fur as much as I please” 166

Taking the papers from Campbell’s hand, passed out of the house without a word of farewell 208

EVELYN BYRD

[Illustration]

I

A STRICKEN CORSAGE

A BATTERY of six twelve-pounder Napoleon guns lay in a little skirt of woodland on the south bank of the Rapidan. It was raining, not violently, but with a soaking persistence that might well have made the artillery-men tired of life and ready to welcome whatever end that day’s skirmishing might bring to the weariness of living. But these men were veteran soldiers, inured to hardship as well as to danger. A saturating rain meant next to nothing to them. A day’s discomfort, more or less, counted not at all in the monotonously uncomfortable routine of their lives.

They had been sent into the woodland an hour or two ago, and had done a little desultory firing now and then, merely by way of disturbing the movements of small bodies of the enemy who were being shifted about on the other side of the river.

Just now the guns were silent, no enemy being in sight, and Captain Marshall Pollard being disposed to save his ammunition against the time, now obviously near at hand, when the new commander of the Federal forces, General Grant, should push the Army of the Potomac across the river to make a final trial of strength and sagacity with that small but wonderfully fighting Army of Northern Virginia directed by the master mind of Robert E. Lee.

But, while no enemy was within sight, there was a hornets’ nest of Federal sharp-shooters concealed in a barn not far beyond the river, and from their secure cover they were very seriously annoying the Confederate lines. The barn lay a little to the left of the battery front, but near enough for the sharp-shooters’ bullets to cut twigs from the tree under which Captain Marshall Pollard sat on horseback with Owen Kilgariff by his side. Still, the fire of the sharp-shooters was not mainly directed upon the woodland-screened battery, but upon the troops in the open field on Pollard’s left.