Outside she found Captain Dadd standing quietly under the big locust-tree, gazing tranquilly down the turnpike, where a gallop of horses’ hoofs rang out from a cloud of dust, through which gray uniforms now and then flashed forth. Quiet he stood, but expectant, and his sword hung by its strap from his right hand, while even as Mrs. Sessions looked she saw him gently lift the butt of his Colt’s to see if it was loose in the holster. She ran up beside him and clutched his arm. He looked down at her, smiled quietly, and even more quietly put his arm about her slender waist. She nodded. Jimmie stood beside them, in his hand a huge .44--resurrected, like the bayonet, from the stricken field. And so they waited. The Confederate troop came swinging up the turnpike; lean, capable, hard-bitten men on a raid. “Halt!” They drew up at the gate, with a scrabble of hoofs and a confusion of horses’ bodies. “Take that man and boy prisoner,” came the voice from the big, black-bearded man at the head--a man with the bars of a captain. Four troopers spurred into the yard and approached. “Shoot till they get us,” ordered Captain Dadd. “Better anything than a Southern military prison. Especially for Joe when he’s wounded. Good luck, Emily; good luck, Jimmie. Stand behind that tree there, Emily dear. They’re real men. They won’t pester you. Careful aim, Jimmie. Let ’er go!” The revolvers of two men--one a boy and one gray of hair, but men both--rang out together. Two troopers, now but ten feet away, swayed in the saddle and one very quietly slid off. Again rang the revolvers, but before anyone could tell whether the shots had taken effect, the whole troop came hurtling up the lane, and thundering, whirling around them, caught at the two. A swift down-swoop by the black-bearded captain of Southern cavalry, and a revolver butt laid Captain Dadd out senseless and bleeding. A quick twirl of a halter and Jimmie was swung up to a trooper’s saddle, kicking, but helpless. A nasty saber scratch was across the lad’s forehead. The old lady was left alone beside the fallen body of Dad. She knelt beside him with great tears in her eyes, her voice keening the world-old sob of sorrow that brave women give their dying lovers. Nurse as she was, she did not now stop to realize that a blow from a pistol butt is far more likely to stun than to kill. The captain of Confederate cavalry swung off his horse and looked in at the doorway. Emily Sessions, frantically kissing the forehead of Dad, didn’t hear, but within the cottage the erstwhile sedate Joseph Brinton staggered from his bed, dizzy with pain, and snarled out hysterically: “You get the hell out of here!” The huge, black-bearded captain merely smiled and, mounting, rode back along the lane toward the highroad. He stopped so suddenly that the horse of the trooper behind almost piled up on the haunches of the captain’s horse.