And placidly in the sunshine the sentry paced his beat before the south portico, the reaches of the drive in sight, the appropriate entrance of the place, all unconscious of aught amiss, seeing nothing, hearing nothing,--till suddenly, with an effect of confusion, like the distortions of a delirium, he was aware that the grove was full of Federal soldiers, chiefly from the infantry regiment camped in the orchard to the west,--soldiers in wild disorder, hatless, shoeless, coatless, many of them,--all armed, all howling with an unexplained excitement, racing frantically hither and thither, bushwhacking with their rifles every bough in their reach. And now they came at full run, still howling and wild, toward the house. "Halt!" cried the sentry. "Halt!" The advance came surging on, regardless. "Halt, or I fire!" once more the guard warned the onset. And he levelled his weapon. They clamored out words at him, all madly intermingled, all unintelligible, approaching still at full run. Perhaps the sentinel had some excusable regard for his own safety, for in the unexplained excitement that possessed them, they were less soldiery than a frantic mob. He had warrant enough to fire into the midst of the crowd. But it seemed that he might in a moment have been torn limb from limb. He interpreted his duty on the side of caution. He cocked his weapon, fired into the air, and called lustily upon the "Corporal of the guard." The mass surged into the house, some by the front door, some by the open library window, others scaled the balcony and pressed through the drawing-rooms and into the hall. The terrified children clung to the skirt of Mrs. Gwynn's dress, as amazed and bewildered she stood in the wide long hall, by the great carved newel of the stairs, while with frantic interrogatories--"Where is he? Where is he? Who is he?"--the intruders searched every nook and cranny of the lower floor. Destruction, the inadvertent incident of haste, or the concomitant of clumsy accoutrements, seemed to attend their steps. Now sounded the shiver of glass as a soldier burst through one of the long French windows of the dining room. A trooper caught his huge cavalry spurs in the meshes of a lace curtain in one of the parlors and brought down cornice, lambrequin, and all with a crash. The crystal shades of the hall chandelier were not proof against a bayonet, held unduly aloft at the posture of Shoulder Arms. A tussle for precedence knocked a weighty marble statue, half life-size, out of the niche at the turn of the staircase. These casualties and the attendant noise, the heavy tramp of booted feet, the raucous sonority of their voices as they called suggestions to each other, all intensified the terror, the tumult of their uncontrolled and turbulent presence.