Long icicles hung from the burned portions of upper floors that still stood.
Used to war's ruin as he had become, Harry's eyes filled with tears at the sight.

It seemed a city dead, but not yet buried.

But on Christmas day his friends and he resolutely dismissed gloom, and, first making a brave pretence, finally succeeded in having real cheerfulness in a fine old brick house which had been pretty well shot up, but which had some sound rooms remaining.

Its owner had sent word that, while he could not yet come back to it with his family, he would be glad if the Southern army would make use of it in his absence.
It was in this house that the little colony of friends gathered, everyone bringing to the dinner what he could.

Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St.Hilaire occupied the great sitting room on the ground floor, and here the dinner would be spread, as a part of the dining-room had been shot away and was still wet from snow and rain.
But the sitting room gladdened the eye.