Edward Cary lay, not in the hospital that was raided, but in a house in the village. It was a fairly large house, and upstairs and down it was filled with the wounded. The surgeons and the village women had their hands full. He lay quite conscious, much weakened, but going to recover. There were a number of pallets in this upper hall where he had been placed. Officers and men occupied them, some much hurt, others more slightly. A surgeon with a woman to help went from bed to bed. The more frightful cases were downstairs, and from that region there came again and again a wailing cry from flesh and blood and bone under probe and saw. Out of doors the sun shone hot, and in at the open, unshaded windows came a dull sound of firing. The flies were bad. Two girls with palm-leaf fans, moving from pallet to pallet, struggled with them as best they might, but in the blood and glare and heat they settled again. The wounded moved their heads from side to side, fought them away with their hands. Désirée came up the stairs and into the hall. She had hanging at her waist a pair of scissors, and in her arms a bolt of something dusty-white. Unrolled at the stairhead, and cut swiftly into lengths, it proved to be mosquito netting. “I found it in a little store here. They didn’t know they had it.” The hot, bright morning went on. Outside the firing swelled and sank and swelled again. Sometimes it sounded far away, sometimes as though it were in the street below. The less injured, the reasonably comfortable, listened with feverish interest. “On the right again!—Stevenson and Stewart have had the brunt.—No! that’s centre now.—Cleburne, I think. He’s a good one! Who’s passing through the street below? Old Joe? Give him a cheer, whoever’s got a voice!” The morning wore on to hot noon. The village women had furnished kettlefuls of broth that stony necessity made very thin. Such as it was, it tasted good to the wounded who could eat and drink. For those who turned moaningly away their comrades had the divinest pity. “Poor fellow! he’s badly off! I reckon he’s going to die—Do you remember, at Baker’s Creek, how he fought that gun all alone?” Hot noon wore into sultry afternoon. The sun went behind a smooth pall of greyish cloud. His going did not lessen the heat; there was no air, a kind of breathless oppression. In the midst of it, and during what seemed a three-quarter circle of firing, north, east, and west, surgeons and orderlies appeared in the upper hall. “We’ve got to move you folk! Yankees marching on Calhoun and so’s the Army of Tennessee. Six miles by rail and the wagons are ready to take you to the station. Cheer up, now! the whole Western Atlantic’s reserved for us!”