"Grandfather!" called Emmeline. "Where have you been?"
Then Emmeline stood still. So did the man on the porch. So did other men down by the lane, by the gate, in the road. They were strangers, and there were scores of them, multitudes of them. They were soldiers in worn uniforms.
Of soldiers, as soldiers, Emmeline was not afraid; but the color of these soldiers' uniforms was gray!
CHAPTER III
EMMELINE MEETS THE ENEMIES OF HER COUNTRY
It seemed to Emmeline, as she stood at the outlet of the wood road, that an hour passed before any one spoke or moved. She herself was too much confused to speak. How had these men come up so quietly? Porch and dooryard and fields were thronged. The ridge that cut off Gettysburg from her view, the road down which she had run after she had left Mrs. Schmidt,—they, too, were filled with men, and horses, caissons, cannon, and huge wagons. And the soldiers were clad, not in friendly blue, but in hateful gray.
Only in Emmeline's immediate neighborhood was silence. Beyond, men were shouting, horses were neighing, and wheels were creaking. Yonder, a body of troops advanced to the music of a fife; here a bugler was playing. Men were laying fires with little piles of sticks; men were going to Willoughby Run for water; men were leading horses down to drink. The throng seemed to be thickening every moment.
One man, tall and lean and brown, lifted his hand from the latch of Grandfather Willing's door and came to the edge of the porch. He had only one arm; under his coat were the bandages that still bound a recent wound. He had quiet gray eyes, which smiled at Emmeline.
He and his friends could have been to Emmeline no more startling an apparition than she was to them. The dust of travel had soiled somewhat her blue-and-white dress and her white stockings, but she seemed to the soldiers immaculate and fairy-like. Some exclaimed sharply; into the eyes of others came a sudden smarting and burning. In their minds they saw far away other little girls with dark braids and ruffled dresses. But Emmeline did not see their tears; these were her enemies.