"I thank you for doing so; and all the more that we are threatened by another force of the enemy," continued the captain. "Your men, especially the riflemen, have rendered very important service in this action, and I shall report it to Major Lyon when the squadron is reunited. The rest of your men have been very useful to us, not only in guarding the wagons, but in the fight with the second platoon. I think you had better send an orderly to Lieutenant Ripley with an order that he remain where he is by the woods; for if we engage another company of the enemy, the riflemen will be needed to act as sharpshooters, and to render the same service as before, though they will probably not be driven back again beyond rifle-shot distance from the road." "As the enemy approach they will see the hospitals on their left, and that will apprise them that a battle has been fought here." "We have not time to remove these hospitals, and put everything as it was at the beginning of the engagement; but I shall fight this encounter so far as possible on the same plan as before, for it worked admirably; and we owe the result as much to our fortunate position as to anything else, for it enabled me to place your riflemen where they did the most effective work of the morning." Captain Gordon had already despatched messengers to his two lieutenants, instructing them to move their platoons back to the side of the hill to the positions they had occupied before the action; and this order was now in process of being executed. Dr. Barlow, though he had been a fighting man at the beginning of the engagement, was now attending to the wounded, assisted by some men he had selected from his own company. "I think you had better take possession of the house of this Secesh farmer for the wounded. He would have spoiled the morning's work if he had escaped, for he would have warned the enemy of their danger from a superior force." The captain approved the idea, and instructed the colonel to effect the removal with his own force. The riflemen were also directed to remove the dead into the forest until there was time to dispose of them. The ground was still strewn with the dead, as they had fallen under the destructive fire of the sharpshooters. With the exception of the Confederate hospital, which was near the foot of the hill,--for their own surgeon had chosen the location by the side of a flowing brook, in the shadow of some mighty walnuts,--the hill presented the same appearance as when the enemy came in sight of it, and had been lured on to their defeat by the deceptive silence of the locality; for not a sound or a moving thing betrayed the peril that surrounded them.