saw a classic white building on a patch of incredible greenery, infinitely remote; and then from the center of the city came a deafening explosion, a great sullen sheet of flame, followed by flashes like lightning in the settling blackness.
"The powder magazines," Elim heard repeated from person to person. An irregular file of Confederate soldiers galloped past him, and the echo of their hoofs had hardly died before a troop of mounted Union cavalry, with slanting carbines, rode at their heels. They belonged, Elim recognized, to Kautz' command.
He had now reached the fourth turn beyond the withdrawn vision of the capitol, and he advanced through a black snowing of soot. Flames, fanlike and pallid, now flickered about his feet, streamed in the gutters and lapped the curbs. He saw heaps of broken bottles against the bricks, and the smell of fine spilled wines and liquors hung in his nostrils. His reason again wavered—the tremendous spectacle of burning assumed an apocalyptic appearance, as if the city had burst spontaneously into flame from the passionate and evil spirits engendered and liberated by war.
He stopped at the first crossing and saw before him a row of tall brick houses, built solidly and set behind small yards and a low iron fencing. They had shallow porticoes with iron grilling, and at this end a towering magnolia tree swept its new glossy greenery against the third-story windows.
"Linden Row," he muttered. "Well—Number Two?"
He swung back a creaking gate and went up a flight of
