Damp finger-prints were upon the outer leaves, and the pages adhered to her moistened hand.  She loosened her grip, and the book opened to a particularly soiled page on which a line had been underscored with a thick red mark.  Dully, Great Taylor read the line, spelling out the words; but it conveyed nothing to her intellect.  It was the fighting phrase of a famous soldier:  “I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard.”

“What does that mean?” she mumbled.  Her eyes wandered to the top of the page, where in larger type was the title:  “Life of ‘STONEWALL’ JACKSON.”  “Stonewall,” repeated Nell.  “Stonewall!” The word had the potency to bring vividly before her Grit’s drooping, grimy form.  Her ears rang with his ridiculous boast.  His voice seemed no longer low and weary.  “When I say a thing ... stone wall.  Can’t go there again—­now or never.”  Great Taylor mumbled disparagingly, “He got it from a book!” And again she read the fighting phrase of Grit’s hero:  “I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard.”  “Can’t mean Grit,” she mused.  “He never threw away anything....”  And she tossed his desecrated Bible toward the peach crate; but missing its aim, the book slid along the floor with a slight rustle, almost like a sigh, and struck the chair-board behind the washtubs, where it lay limp and forgotten.

Back of Nell the clock struck the half hour, and she turned quickly, her heart thumping with the fear of being late.  But the hour was only three thirty.  “Plenty time.”  She gazed at the broken clock.  “A good clock,” Grit used to say; “keeps time and only cost a quarter.”  “Stone wall!...  Humph!...”

Nell transformed the washtubs into a bath by the removal of the centre partition, and within an hour was bathed and dressed.  Sticking the pins through her straw hat, dyed black, she took from the bottom drawer of the cupboard a patent-leather hand-bag with colourful worsted fruit embroidered upon its shining sides.  She thought of the night Grit had brought it home to her, his pride—­he had bought it at a store.  But a glance around the room obliterated this memory, and she mumbled, “Wish I warn’t never, never going to see this place again!  Wait till I get money....”  She glared at the broken furniture, each piece of which brought back some memory of the man.  She could see him drooping in the armchair, with his wrists crossed, fingers curled.  She glared at the shelf and imagined him fumbling for something that was not there.  She started for the door, then, turning back, reached into the peach crate.  “There!  Keep your old molasses jug!” she said, in a dry voice, and, replacing the jug on the shelf, she went out into the hall.