Unnamed Strangers Passing through Yoknapatawpha

During the last winter of the Civil War, Rosa says in Absalom!, "stragglers" frequently passed by the Sutpen plantation where she, Judith and Clytemnestra lived. Some she says were "tramps, ruffians," but others were "soldiers beginning to come back" from the war, "men who had risked and lost everything" (126). Right after the passage mentions the "wife or mistress" of such men "who in [their] absence has been raped," Rosa adds: "We were afraid," but "we fed them" (126).