The effect was terrific. The bushes were mown down as with a scythe, and it seemed impossible to the two women that any human being should survive the iron hailstorm for a single minute. The sharpshooters scurried away precipitately, one of them actually stumbling over Agatha's prostrate form, which he probably took to be that of some comrade slain. But Agatha and her maid remained, and the fearful fire continued. They remained because there was nothing else for them to do. They could not retreat. They could not surrender. They were starving. They must go forward or die.
Then the courage and daring of her race came to Agatha's soul, and she resolved to make a last desperate attempt to save herself, not by running away from the fire,—which would be worse than useless,—but by running into it. The danger in doing this was scarcely greater, in fact, though it seemed so, than that involved in lying still, but it requires an extraordinary courage for one unarmed and not inspired by the desperate all-daring spirit of battle, to rush upon guns that are belching canister in half-gallon charges, at the rate of three or four times a minute.
The sharpshooters were completely gone now, and nothing lay between the young woman and her friends except a canister-swept open space fifty yards in width. This the heroic girl—baffled of all other resource—determined to dare. Directing Martha to follow her closely, she rose and in the gray of the dawn ran like a deer toward the bellowing guns. Fortunately, some one at the guns caught sight of the fleet-footed pair when they had covered about half the distance, and, in the increasing light, saw them to be women. Instantly the order, "Cease firing!" was given, and the clamorous cannon were hushed, but a heavy musketry fire from the enemy broke forth just as Agatha and her maid fell exhausted between the guns. A voice of command rang out:
"Pick up those women, quick, and carry them out of the fire!" Half a dozen of the men responded, and strong arms carried the nearly lifeless women to a small depression just in rear, where they were screened from the now slowly slackening shower of bullets.
When the fire had completely ceased, Captain Baillie Pegram ordered his guns, "By hand to the rear," and rode back to inquire concerning his captives. It was then that he discovered for the first time who the fugitives were, and the horror with which he realised what he supposed to be the situation, set him reeling in his saddle.
He had heard nothing of Agatha's mission to the north, of course. He now knew only that she had been hiding within the enemy's lines, and only one interpretation of that fact seemed possible. Agatha Ronald—the woman he loved, the woman upon whose integrity and Virginianism he would have staked his life without a second thought—had turned traitor! He did not pause to ask himself how, in such a case, she had come to be in the thicket among the sharpshooters. He was too greatly stunned to think of that, or otherwise to reason clearly.
Nor did he question her, except to ask if she or her maid had been wounded, and when she assured him of their safety, he said:
"I don't know whether to thank God for that or not. It might have been better, perhaps, if both had fallen."
Agatha heard the remark, and understood in part at least the thought that lay behind it. But she did not reply. She only said, feebly:
"We are starving."