“Yes. . . .  I didn’t know.  I saw part of a battery blown up; and a soldier stood on the hill and shouted for stretchers.  There was nobody else to start them off, so I did it.”

He nodded.  “Wait here, dear.  I will run over and ask Dr. Connor whether they have moved Colonel Arran——­”

“Colonel Arran!  Oh, Philip!  I forgot to tell you—­” She clutched his arm in her excitement, and he halted, alarmed.

“Has anything happened to him?” he demanded.

“He asked for you.”

“Is he worse?”

“I fear so.”

“Dying?”

“Phil—­I am afraid so.  He—­he—­thinks that you are his son!”

“W-what are you saying!” he stammered:  “What are you trying to tell me, Ailsa?”

“Phil—­my darling!—­don’t look that way!” she exclaimed, frightened.

“What way?” He laughed as though crazed.  “Where is he?  Do you know?  I want to see him.  You better let me see him.”

“I’ll go with you, Phil; I’ll be close beside you.  You mustn’t become so terribly excited; I didn’t know what I was saying; I think he is delirious——­”

“Where is he?  I can’t endure this much longer,” he kept repeating in a vacant way as they forced a path among the litters and ambulances, and came out through the smoke blowing from a pile of debris that lay where the east wing of the seminary had once stood.  Charred and battered, every window smashed, and the blackened rafters of the roof still smouldering, the east wing rose before them, surrounded by the wounded.

A surgeon told them that Colonel Arran had been carried out of the barn, but to what place he did not know.  Letty with Dr. Benton passed them by the stables, but they knew only that Colonel Arran, lying on a litter, had been placed in an ambulance which had started for Azalea Court House.

This was confirmed by Dr. Connor, who came hurrying by and who halted to scowl heartily at Ailsa.

“No more of that!” he said roughly.  “When I want a nurse on the firing line I’ll detail her.  I’ve sent two hundred invalids to the landing, and I wanted you to go with them and when I looked around for you I saw you kiting for the line of battle!  That’s all wrong, Mrs. Paige!  That’s all wrong!  You look sick anyway.  Are you?”

“No.  I’ll go now, if you’ll let me, Dr. Connor.”

“How are you going to get there?  I haven’t another ambulance to send—­not a horse or a mule——­”

“I—­I’ll walk,” she said with a sob in her throat.  “I am fearfully sorry—­and ashamed——­”

“There, there,” muttered Dr. Connor, “I didn’t mean all I said.  It was a brave thing to do—­not that your pluck mitigates the offence!  Be a little more considerate; think a little faster; don’t take to your legs on the first impulse.  Some fool told me you’d been killed—­and that made—­made me—­most damnably angry!” he burst out with a roar to cover the emotion working at his mouth and eyes.