Long lines of them were swinging out east and west across the country, where a battery went into action wrapped in torrents of smoke.
Bullets swarmed, singing above and around in every key, and the distracting racket of the shrapnel shells became continuous.
Ailsa and Letty ran, stooping, into the lane where the stretchers were being hurried across the little footbridge.

As they crossed they saw a dead artilleryman lying in the water, a crimson thread wavering from his head to the surface.

It was Arthur Wye; and Letty knew him, and halted, trembling; but Ailsa called to her in a frightened voice, for, confused by the smoke, they had come out in the rear of a battery among the caissons, and the stretchers had turned to the right, filing down into the hollow where the barns stood on the edge of a cedar grove.
Already men were hard at work erecting hospital tents; the wounded lay on their stretchers, bloodless faces turned to the sky, the wind whipping their blankets and uncovering their naked, emaciated bodies.

The faces of the dead had turned black.
"Good God!" said Dr.Benton as Letty and Ailsa came up, out of'breath, "we've got to get these sick men under shelter! Can you two girls keep their blankets from blowing away ?" They hurried from cot to cot, from mattress to mattress, from one heap of straw to another, from stretcher to stretcher, deftly replacing sheet and blanket, tucking them gently under, whispering courage, sometimes a gay jest or smiling admonition to the helpless men, soothing, petting, reassuring.
The medical director with his corps of aides worked furiously to get up the big tents.

The smoke from the battery blew east and south, flowing into the hollow in sulphurous streams; the uproar from the musketry was terrific.
Ailsa, kneeling beside a stretcher to tuck in the blankets, looked up over her shoulder suddenly at Letty.
"Where did they take Colonel Arran ?" "I don't know, dear." Ailsa rose from her knees and looked around her through the flying smoke; then she got wearily to her feet and began to make inquiries.