"Come on now! You Unionists are beaten. Retreat!" called the director, and Lieutenant Varley's men rode off, leaving him and some others injured on the field of the conflict.
It was here that Alice and Ruth took an active part again. Ruth rushed up to the fallen lieutenant and felt his pulse. No sooner had she done so than the director cried:
"Stop the camera! That won't do, Miss DeVere!"
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because you felt his pulse with your thumb. No nurse would do that. The pulse in the thumb itself is too strong to allow any one to feel the pulse in another's wrist. Use the tips of your first and second fingers. Now try again. Ready, Russ!"
This time Ruth did it right. It was characteristic of Mr. Pertell to notice a little detail like that.
"Not one person in a hundred would object to the pulse being felt with the thumb," he explained afterward; "but the hundredth person in the audience would be a doctor, and he'd know right away that the director was at fault. It is the little things that count."
Ruth and Alice busied themselves ministering to the wounded who were made prisoners by the Confederates. The lieutenant was put in their carriage and driven away. That ended the scene at the place of the skirmish.
"Very well done!" Mr. Pertell told the girls, as they prepared for the next act, which was in a room of a Southern house, whither the wounded had been carried.
These were busy days at Oak Farm. With the arrival of the two regiments of the National Guard, pictures were taken every day, leading up to the big battle scene, which had been postponed. When they were not posing for the cameras, the guardsmen were drilling in accordance with the regulations of the annual state encampment under the direction of the regular army officers.