"Bring two horses, quickly," Baillie commanded. "Lieutenant Mills, take the guns back to the bivouac. Our work here is done."
Then turning to Agatha, he explained:
"We have no rations here; can you manage to ride as far as our bivouac? It is only half a mile away, and we'll find something to eat there."
Agatha's exhaustion was so great that she could scarcely sit up, but she summoned all her resolution and managed to hold herself in place on the McClellan saddle which alone was available for her use. Martha was carried by the men on an improvised litter.
At the bivouac, no food was found except a pone or two of coarse corn bread and a few slices of uncooked bacon. But the delicate girl and her maid devoured these almost greedily, eating the bacon raw in soldier fashion, for, of course, no fires were allowed upon the picket-line.
Food and rest quickly revived Agatha, and Baillie remembered certain very peremptory orders he had received as to his course of procedure should "any woman whatever" come into his lines.
"I must escort you presently to a safer place than this," he said.
"Am I to go under compulsion, Captain Pegram," the girl asked, "or of my own accord?"
"With that," he answered, "I am afraid I have nothing to do. My sole concern is to take you out of danger. It is not my business to ask you questions as to how you have come into danger in a way so peculiar."
"And yet," she replied, "that is a matter that I suppose requires inquiry, and I am ready for the ordeal."