fingers over the carved lines, some that were in the design and others that had been caused by its years of use.

He fell asleep then, without pillow or blanket but too weary to care. His dreams were bleak for they combined, at once, the deaths of the three Portland ladies, but this time Miss Kitty Simmons joined them. She was suffering from the same wounds as many of the soldiers who had survived the return to camp, with limbs crushed by the violently thrown masonry that the premature explosion had caused. But he was unable to save her, so that everything he tried only worsened her condition until, at last, she died in his arms.

The following day was one of peace, as Portland had told him it would be. There was no gunfire to be heard, but the troops continued to drill creating the continued s...

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