Cold Mountain

One particularly dark night, Inman continues his journey, worrying about the Home Guard. He encounters a man who seems to be in the midst of a deep despair, even more so than Inman. The man is in the middle of the road, blocking Inman’s advance, and calling out to God.

As Inman watches, the man carries a woman to all the way up to a cliff edge. He seems intent on hurling her from the cliff, into the abyss below. Inman intervenes. The man turns to Inman and introduces himself. He is a preacher, he says, who broke his vows to God by conceiving a child with this woman. Inman notes that the pregnant woman is still alive, so he tells the preacher to return her to her horse. When he does so, Inman forces the preacher to lead them all to the local town. They walk in silence and Inman thinks about the evening after the Battle of Fredericksburg. He remembers how he stared at the stars while standing alongside a fellow soldier. They spoke about the paucity of human knowledge against the vast, mysterious universe which seems knowable only to God.

Inman learns more about the situation in which he now finds himself.