The town shuddered with a formidable invasion. These were civilians and their women, these were not soldiers, and on every side you realized why they had come to Gettysburg, and you knew that the town would groan for months beneath their anguish and their crusading. They crowded in doorways, they buzzed on the hotel porch, and every hour brought recruits in wagons and buggies, dark parades pouring from the north and east and south, now even beginning to drift in from the west.

Muskets were corded like firewood on the sidewalk of York street, and Chambersburg street still lay tense with its broken caissons and rotting horses.

Eva Duffey found Dan as he came out of the hotel dining room. Oh, she cried, what you must have been through! We’ve all been through it, he heard himself assuring her. What now? I’ve got a shadow of myself back.

“Make the rounds,” she told him, twisting her hands. “Look for Elijah, Dan! I tremble to think what will happen to his mother if we don’t get track of him soon. She sits and rocks, all the time. She— I’ve looked and looked, but there are so many thousand wounded.” She whispered, “Adam. Daniel, Adam’s in liquor. He won’t sleep, but he drinks and drinks. He’s off tending the wounded now. I fear he may poison some of ’em. He frightens me.” Then she burst into tears, and went away down York street to the Huddlestone house.

“Where’s the bulk of the wounded?” Dan asked of a soldier on the corner.

The soldier jerked his head. “South,” he said. “Still out in the woods at corps hospitals. Town’s full, too. All these here colleges and a lot of houses. Full—clean full. You might start down there at that church, if you’re looking for anybody special. The Christian Commission are right good help.”