Mrs. Duffey found the front door. She thought, If they’ve shot Adam they might as well shoot me, too. She pushed open the door and stepped out on the porch. Through the curtain of morning-glory vines she could see a little knot of dark blue figures at the intersection, behind the picket fence of Deffenbaughs’ wide lawn. A horse was trotting in at Grandma Leen’s gate and up across her flowers; its saddle was empty. The swarm of brown men roared over the picket fence and the purple huddle behind it. More shots rang, isolated in all the confusion from every side, and she could see hands lifted high, waving out of the crowd … Several soldiers came running back up the road and bent over something which lay there. It was the man with the torn white shirt. They didn’t pick him up; they bent down one by one, and then arose and moved back a foot or two, and stood looking at him.

The rebels possessed the entire village. When Adam Duffey had not come back at sunset, his wife started out to hunt for him. The battle seemed to be over, mainly, though firing jangled intermittently out near the cemetery. Columns of Confederates were swinging in from the north and east and west, and the Diamond was a turmoil of wagons and guns. A few citizens crept out of their houses. Mr. Pock was in his store, even so soon, and selling things.

People whispered that the Union troops had taken refuge on the hill at the cemetery, and they had such a mass of cannon up there among the rocks that the rebels dared not attack them. Probably the Nationals would be in full retreat by morning, and the enemy after them … An endless double-file of men in blue uniforms tramped north across the railroad track, marching without their weapons, and herded along by a sprinkling of armed rebels. Mrs. Duffey went down Baltimore street almost to the tannery, until a sentry told her that she could come no farther. Every once in awhile a rifle sounded, somewhere inside the tannery building, and it would be answered by shots from up on the hill.

“I’m looking for my husband, Doctor Adam Duffey.”

The sentry nodded toward the shady slope beyond. “If he’s up there, he might as well be in Africa as far as you’re concerned, ma’am. Can’t pass here.”

“Maybe he’s hurt … did you see a carryall and—?”

He shook his head. Then, possessed of a sudden and understanding pity, he bent down and pointed at the tannery. “Look. There’s some of our people over there. Sharp-shooters, with telescopes on their guns. They’re having a shooting match with some Yanks up by that brick house.”