So after they had given Christian burial to the heroic dead, they placed the remains of the Free Sword and his wife in an army hearse and conveyed them to a little, old, deserted country churchyard, some three miles distant on the road to W., where the chaplain of the regiment read over them the funeral service, and where they were finally laid side by side in their resting-place—not unwept.
The tears of Elfie, who attended the funeral, fell like rain. And even Wing, who was charged with the business of the burial, was said to have dimmed the smart gold lace of his adjutant’s uniform with drops of sorrow.
The wounded were tenderly laid in ambulances, and sent on to W. under an escort of one company of cavalry.
As Elfie evinced the utmost impatience to return home, and as Colonel Rosenthal was anxious to be rid of all incumbrances, so that he might immediately go after Monck, he next morning sent Miss Fielding under a guard of honor, commanded by Adjutant Wing, to the Point of Rocks, from which she was to take the evening train to Washington.
It was while waiting at a Union farm-house near the station, that Elfie learned the final ending of the picnic party. The old farmer informed her that after the guerrillas fled, leaving the excursionists on the hill, they—the excursionists—went down to look for their boat, with the intention of returning to the city by the same way in which they had come.
But on reaching the foot of the hill and the side of the canal, they found that their boat had been robbed of all its movable effects, and then scuttled and sunk.
The unfortunate creatures had nothing to do but to return to the top of the hill and lay down to sleep as well as they could in the open air.
The next morning, cold, hungry, and cruelly stiff and sore in all their limbs, they set out to walk to the Point of Rocks, to wait for the train to Washington.
But such a starved and wretched set of ragamuffins they looked, that the conductor of the train, when it came, distrusted them, and refused to take them on until they had told and proved their story.
Such was the account of the picnic party given by the old farmer to Elfie.