Several Confederates with stretchers were crossing the lawn. On the stretchers lay three soldiers, all badly wounded.
"We can't carry them any further, madam," said one of the party. "Will you be kind enough to take them in?"
"Yes, yes!" cried Mrs. Ruthven. "Bring them in at once. We will do our best for them!" And she summoned the servants to prepare cots on the lower floor, since it would have been awkward to take the wounded upstairs.
The stretcher-carriers were followed by others, until six wounded Confederates lay on cots in the sitting room. A young surgeon was at hand, and he went to work without delay, and Mrs. Ruthven and Marion assisted.
And now the army was passing by the plantation, some on foot, some on horseback, and all exhausted, ragged, covered with dust and dirt, and many badly wounded. The shooting of small-arms had ceased, but the distant cannon still kept booming, and occasionally a shell burst in the vicinity. As the last of the Confederates swept by Jack ran down to the roadway.
"The enemy are coming!" he said, after a long look ahead. "They will be here in less than ten minutes."
Soon the trampling of horses' hoofs was heard, and then came the occasional blast of a trumpet. At last a troop of cavalry swept by, paying no attention to the Ruthven homestead.
The cavalry was followed at a distance by a company of rascally looking guerrillas—followers of every army—who fight simply for the sake of looting afterward.
"To the house!" cried the captain of the guerrillas, a man named Sandy Barnes.
"Company, attention!" cried out Jack, and drew up his command across the lawn in front of the homestead.