"This," the orderly said, pointing to a small stone building in a bare and ragged waste of trees, shrubs, and ruined implements of war, "is the Henry House--what is left of it--the key of our position when Jackson formed his stone wall facing toward the northwest, over there where your folks very cleverly flanked us and waited an hour or two, Heaven only knows what for, unless it was to give us time to bring up our re-enforcements. Your officers lay the blame on Burnside and Hunter, who, they declare, just sat still half the day, while Sherman got in behind us and would have captured every man Jack of our fellows, if Johnston hadn't come up, where I showed you, in the very nick of time." The women were looking eagerly at the field of death. It was still as on the day of the battle, save that instead of the thousands of beating hearts, the flaunting flags, and roaring guns, there were countless ridges torn in the sod, as if a plow had run through at random, limbs and trees torn down and whirled across each other, broken wheels, musket stocks and barrels, twisted and sticking, gaunt and eloquent, in the tough, grassy fiber of the earth. "In this circle of a mile and a half fifty thousand men pelted each other from two o'clock that Sunday morning until four in the afternoon. Up to two o'clock we were on the defensive. We were driven from the broad, smooth road yonder that you see cutting through the trees, northward a mile from here. Jackson alone made a stand; if it hadn't been for him we should have been prisoners in Washington now, I reckon. You see those men at work? They are picking up lead. We reckon that it takes a ton of lead to kill a man." "A ton of lead?" Olympia repeated. "Yes. You wouldn't believe that thousands of men can stand in front of each other a whole day and pour lead into each other's faces, and not one in fifty is hit?" "Ah!" Olympia commented, thinking that, after all, Jack might not have been hit. "These are the trenches of the dead. Our dead are not here. They were all taken and sent to friends. There are five hundred of your dead here and near the stone bridge yonder. We lost three hundred killed in the fight." "And are there no other marks than this plain board?" Olympia pointed to a rough pine plank, sticking loosely in the ground, with the words painted in lampblack: "85 Yanks. By the Hospital Corps, Bee's Brigade." "That's all. They were all stripped--no means of identifying them. The sun was very hot; the rain next day made the bodies rot, and the men had to just shovel them in--" "Oh, oh! don't, pray don't!" Olympia cried, as her mother tottered against the ambulance. "I ask your pardon, ladies; I forgot that these are not things for ladies to hear." He spoke in sincere contrition. To relieve him Olympia smiled sadly, saying, "Won't you take us back, please?"