“Good God!” said Dr. Benton as Letty and Ailsa came up, out of’breath, “we’ve got to get these sick men under shelter!  Can you two girls keep their blankets from blowing away?”

They hurried from cot to cot, from mattress to mattress, from one heap of straw to another, from stretcher to stretcher, deftly replacing sheet and blanket, tucking them gently under, whispering courage, sometimes a gay jest or smiling admonition to the helpless men, soothing, petting, reassuring.

The medical director with his corps of aides worked furiously to get up the big tents.  The smoke from the battery blew east and south, flowing into the hollow in sulphurous streams; the uproar from the musketry was terrific.

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.”

Ailsa turned toward the barns and hurried across the trampled sod.

Through the half light within she peered about her, moving carefully among the wounded stretched out on the fragrant hay.

Colonel Arran lay alone in the light of a window high under the eaves.

“Oh, here you are!” she said gaily.  “I hear most most splendid things about you.  I—­” she stopped short, appalled at the terrible change that was coming over his face.

“I want to see—­Phil—­” he whispered.

“Yes—­yes, I will find him,” she said soothingly; “I will go immediately and find him.”

His head was moving slowly, monotonously, from side to side.

“I want to see my boy,” he murmured.  “He is my son.  I wish you to know it—­my only son.”

He lifted his brilliant eyes to Ailsa.

Twice he strove to speak, and could not, and she watched him, stunned.

He made the supreme effort.

“Philip!” he gasped; “our son!  My little son!  My little, little boy!  I want him, Ailsa, I want him near me when I die!”