@@@@@It started as malicious gossip that had
@@@@@It
started as malicious gossip that had people laughing all over town
Mary Elizabeth Pitt, a spinster in her forties, claimed that she had
awakened in the middle of the night and seen a man in her room
"Just as plain as anything," she said, "with a kerchief over his face
like Jesse James
"If ever I heard wishful thinking," someone unkindly commented,
"that's
itMary Elizabeth must be twenty years older than Jesse James The
newspaper had been printing a series of articles romanticizing the
daring exploits of the James brothers and their gangBut the
following day the story took an ugly turn
Alicia Savage was also in her forties, but she had been married twice,
and everyone knew that she was a calm-natured, rational woman
She,
too, had woken up and seen a man in her bedroom, standing beside
her
bed, looking at her in the moonlightHe was holding the curtain back
to let the light in, and he was staring over a kerchief that hid the
lower part of his faceThe upper part was shadowed by the bill of
hiscapHe was wearing the uniform of a Union soldierSavage
screamed and threw a book from her bedside table at himHe went
through the curtains onto the piazza before her husband reached her
roomA Yankee! Suddenly everyone was afraidWomen alone were
frightened for themselves; women with husbands were frightened for
themselves and even more afraid for their husbands, because if a man
injured a Union soldier, he'd go to prison or even be hangedThe next
night and the next, the soldier materialized in a woman's bedroom
On
the third night, the report was the worst of allIt wasn't moonlight
that woke Theodosia Harding, it was the movement of a warm hand on
the
coverlet over her breastsOnly darkness met her eyes when she
opened
themBut she could hear strangled breathing, feel a crouching
presenceShe cried out, then fainted from fearNo one knew what
might have happened nextTheodosia had been sent to cousins in
SummervilleEveryone said she was in a state of collapse