me and help me to keep my mother's house from
being ransacked?"

"Yes! yes!" was the ready reply.

"Hurrah for Captain Jack!" put in several of the more enthusiastic ones.

"Thank you, boys. We won't fight unless we have to. But if it comes to
that, let everybody give a good account of himself."

"We will! We will!"

Soon another battery swept by the house, the horses almost ready to drop
from exhaustion. Marion saw this and whispered to her mother.

"Let me do it, mother," she pleaded.

"If you so much wish it," answered Mrs. Ruthven.

With all speed the girl ran to the barn and brought out her own horse, a
beautiful black, and ran him to the road.

"Take my horse and hitch him to yonder cannon!" she cried. "He is
fresh--he will help you save the piece!"

"Good fer you, young lady!" shouted one of the cannoneers. "We've got
friends yet, it seems!" The horse was taken, and the cannon moved on at
a swifter pace than ever.

"That was grand of you, Marion!" cried Jack. He knew just how much she
thought of the steed she had sacrificed, her pet saddle horse.

And now came several of the hospital corps, carrying the wounded on
stretchers, and also several ambulances. In the meantime the shooting
came closer and closer, and several shells sped over the plantation, to
burst with a crash in the woods beyond.

"The battle is at hand! God defend us!" murmured Mrs. Ruthven.

Several Confederates with stretchers were crossing the lawn. On the
stretchers lay three soldiers, all badly wounded.

"We can't carry them any further, madam," said one of the party. "Will
you be kind enough to take them in?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Mrs. Ruthven. "Bring them in at once. We will do our
best for them!" And she summoned the servants to prepare cots on the
lower floor, since it would have been awkward to take the wounded
upstairs.

The stretcher-carriers were followed by others, until six wounded
Confederates lay on cots in the sitting room. A young surgeon was at
hand, and he went to work without delay, and Mrs. Ruthven and Marion
assisted.

And now the army was passing by the plantation, some on foot, some on
horseback, and all exhausted, ragged, covered with dust and dirt, and
many badly wounded. The shooting of small-arms had ceased, but the
distant cannon still kept booming, and occasionally a shell burst in the
vicinity. As the last of the Confederates swept by Jack ran down to the
roadway.

"The enemy are coming!" he sai