But Alice did not care.

Fully convinced of the right, and that she had yet a work to do, she carried out her plan so boldly announced to Colonel Tiffton, and all through the autumn months the frequent clash of firearms was heard in the Spring Bank woods, where Alice, with Mug at her side, like her constant shadow, "shot at her marks," hitting once Colonel Tiffton's dog, and coming pretty near hitting the old colonel himself as he rode leisurely through the woods.
After that Alice confided her experiments to the open fields, where she could see whatever was in danger, and Harney, galloping up and down the pike, stirring up dissension and scattering his opinions broadcast through the country, saw her more than once at her occupation, smiling grimly as he muttered to himself: "It's possible I may try a hand with you at shooting some day, my fair Yankee miss." Blacker, and darker, and thicker the war clouds gathered on our horizon, but our story has little to do with that first year of carnage, when human blood was poured as freely as water, from the Cumberland to the Potomac.

Over all that we pass, and open the scene again in the summer of '62, when people were gradually waking to the fact that Richmond was not so easily taken, or the South so easily conquered..