About the house confusion thickened. Troops returned, powder-blackened, exhausted, famished. Many of the soldiers bound up their own wounds, or let their comrades perform that service for them. From the dark fields rose again the aroma of boiling coffee and frying bacon. The troops in the fields near at hand seemed to have moved closer together, but Emmeline did not understand the significance of the maneuver. Every few minutes she went to the window and strained her eyes into the dusk. Even in the brightening moonlight her gaze could not penetrate into the woodland where the prisoners had vanished.
Presently, when she turned from the window with a sob, Private Christy was looking down upon her. "Emmyline," said he, in his pleasant drawl, "how about them biscuit?"
"I could bake some!" answered Emmeline, suddenly realizing that perhaps hunger was one of the causes of her own misery.
"Biscuits, boys!" cried one pale soldier to another. "She's going to bake biscuits!"
Feeble cheers answered.
"You won't go out of the kitchen, will you, sissy?"
"No," Emmeline promised, and went wearily down the stairs.
The joy with which her first batch of biscuits was received roused her once more. There were many who could not eat, and who called only for water. As the time passed, those cries grew louder and more frequent.
Presently, lantern in hand, a doctor entered and made his way from patient to patient. His clothes had dark stains upon them, and in the dim light he looked white and worn; he moved quickly from one patient to the next, as if other work awaited him. Several quiet forms he turned over, and those were presently taken away.
Emmeline baked her biscuits and spread them with apple butter from her grandmother's crocks, and carried them from room to room. There were by this time dark stains also on her striped dress. Private Christy, saying a word here, changing a position there, moved about the house like a great gray ghost.