This manoeuvre dislodged the group of infantry soldiers who had taken shelter there, and, on all fours, they began crawling and worming and scuffling about among the dead leaves, seeking another shelter from the pelting hail of lead.

There was nothing to be seen beyond the willow gully except smoke, set grotesquely with phantom trees, through which the enemy’s fusillade sparkled and winked like a long level line of fire-flies in the mist.

The stretcher bearers crept about gathering up the wounded who called to them out of the smoke.  Ailsa, on her knees, made her way toward a big cavalryman whose right leg was gone at the thigh.

She did what she could, called for a stretcher, then, crouching close under the bank of raw earth, set her canteen to his blackened lips and held it for him.

“Don’t be discouraged,” she said quietly, “they’ll bring another stretcher in a few moments.  I’ll stay here close beside you until they come.”

The cavalryman was dying; she saw it; he knew it.  And his swollen lips moved.

“Don’t waste time with me,” he managed to say.

“Then—­will you lie very still and not move?”

“Yes; only don’t let the horse step on me.”

She drew her little note-book and pencil from the pocket of her gown and gently lowered her head until one ear was close to his lips.

“What is your name and regiment?”

His voice became suddenly clear.

“John Casson—­Egerton’s Dragoons. . . .  Mrs. Henry Casson, Islip, Long Island.  My mother is a widow; I don’t—­think she—­can—­stand——­”

Then he died—­went out abruptly into eternity.

Beside him, in the grass, lay a zouave watching everything with great hollow eyes.  His body was only a mass of bloody rags; he had been shot all to pieces, yet the bleeding heap was breathing, and the big sunken eyes patiently watched Ailsa’s canteen until she encountered his unwinking gaze.  But the first swallow he took killed him, horribly; and Ailsa, her arms drenched with blood, shrank back and crouched shuddering under the roots of a shattered tree, her consciousness almost deserting her in the roaring and jarring and splintering around her.  She saw more stretcher bearers in the smoke, stooping, edging their way—­unarmed heroes of many a field who fell unnoted, died unrecorded on the rolls of glory.

A lieutenant of artillery, powder-blackened, but jaunty, called down to her from the bank above: 

“Look out, little lady.  We’re going to try to limber up, and we don’t want to drop six horses and a perfectly good gun on top of you!”

Somebody seized her arm and dragged her across the leaves; and she struggled to her knees, to her feet, turned, and started to run.

“This way,” said Berkley’s voice in her ear; and his hand closed on hers.

“Phil—­help me—­I don’t know where I am!”

“I do.  Run this way, under the crest of the hill. . . .  Dr. Connor told me that you had climbed up here.  This isn’t your place!  Are you stark mad?”