Ailsa, kneeling beside a stretcher to tuck in the blankets, looked up over her shoulder suddenly at Letty.
"Where did they take Colonel Arran?"
"I don't know, dear."
Ailsa rose from her knees and looked around her through the flying smoke; then she got wearily to her feet and began to make inquiries. Nobody seemed to know anything about Colonel Arran.
Anxious, she threaded her way through the stretchers and the hurrying attendants, past the men who were erecting the tents, looking everywhere, making inquiries, until, under the trees by the stream, she saw a heap of straw on which a man was dying.
He died as she came up—a big, pallid, red-headed zouave, whose blanket, soaked with blood, bore dreadful witness of his end.
A Sister of Charity rose as though dazed.
"I could not stop the hemorrhage," she said in her soft, bewildered voice.
Together they turned back toward the mass of stretchers, moving with difficulty in the confusion. Letty, passing, glanced wanly at the Sister, then said to Ailsa:
"Colonel Arran is in the second barn on the hay. I am afraid he is dying."