Facing the Confederates in the lane, standing beside the body of her wounded, stood an old lady steadily and ferociously aiming a huge .44. Beside her, bristling and fearless, was another adversary--Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte Dog, who was tearing his little heart out as he leaped up, trying to reach the boot of the trooper who firmly held the still struggling and kicking Jimmie. “You stop!” demanded Emily Sessions. Gone was the rosy and placid look of her. Very old and very terrible were her cold eyes. She seemed to glare into the eyes of death, but gallantly; and she had drawn a bead full on the captain’s heart. Rather whimsically smiling, the black-bearded captain held up both his hands, crying “Halt!” to his troop, who obeyed the command in somewhat amused wonder. “You needn’t to smile so nice as all that,” snapped the old lady. “I’ve half a mind to shoot you. And you tell that man of yours to let Jimmie go. You got the captain, but you ain’t goin’ to get Jimmie, too!” And then she felt around her shoulders the iron arm of one of the Confederate troopers, whose horse had been concealed by the cottage, but who had slipped round in back of her. Desperately she tried to turn the muzzle of the gun on him, but his strong hand slipped down on her arm, caught the revolver and wrenched it from her. She faced the captain again, her shoulders up, ready. “Tell your murderers to finish me, too,” she said. The captain of cavalry, for all his big bulk, slipped from his horse as easily as a youngster dismounting before his sweetheart. “Ma’am,” he said, “we’re soldiers, but Ah reckon we ain’t quite murderers. Mah mother’s a powerful lot like you, ma’am, and Ah reckon Ah love her most’s well most sons do. Sanders, let that boy go. And Ah hope your husband ain’t killed, ma’am. And, ma’am, Ah reckon you’re a praying woman--will you think of my mother to-night when you say your prayers? Last Ah heard, there was a right smart o’ Yanks burnin’ an’ raidin’ near her house, an’-- “Mount! Ride! Trot!” Standing in the lane, watching the bunch of Confederate cavalry go swirling along the turnpike, bound on a raid right for the Federal lines, the old lady suddenly bent back her shoulders and saluted. And the boy Jimmie, beside her, saluted their dust-hidden troop with her. Then immediately: “Take his feet, Jim dear. He ain’t dead. I hear his heart,” said Mrs. Sessions. And stooping, straining, she lifted Dad’s shoulders. They bore him into the house. She ordered Joseph peremptorily to move to the corner, where she laid out a “comfortable” for him to lie on, and she straightened out the still form of Dad on the cot. “Bring water, Jim!” she commanded almost harshly. The boy sped back down the lane with a can of cool water, and she sat bathing Dad’s head, sobbing softly, but always with a pitiful, artificial, unreal, golden little smile ready to spring out if he should come to consciousness.