To Judge Roscoe's infinite relief the officers were disposed to regard the disturbance as one of those inexplicable attacks of folly which sometimes lay hold on a mass of men, but which would be incapable of affecting them as individuals. For a search-party organized on a strict military principle had carefully ransacked every portion of the house and cellar and also the attic,--where no traces betrayed recent habitation,--examined all the vineyard, hedges, shrubbery, and even the boughs of the great trees, and invaded the stable, barn, crib, ice-house, poultry yards, dairy, kennel, dove-cote, the miscellaneous outbuildings, sties and byres, all empty, devoid even of the usual domestic animals--absolutely with no result. No Confederate fugitive, covered with blood or in any other plight, was found, and in the thrice-guarded camps that surrounded the place escape seemed impossible. The ranking officer who ordered the search naturally believed that the sudden conviction of the presence of a Confederate soldier in the house was a sheer delusion, promulgated and distorted by rumor. Some story of Captain Baynell's fall and wound, caught possibly from the messenger sent to fetch the surgeon, had been misunderstood. This he considered was the only reasonable explanation. No one, he argued, could have escaped under the circumstances. No Rebel was in the house or in the grounds. It was impossible for a man to have fled except into the midst of the camps. Notwithstanding the conviction thus reached, special precautionary measures were taken. New sentries were stationed on the rear and west of the house as well as in front. These posts were to be visited by a sergeant with a patrol, twice during the night. If any Rebel had contrived to escape from the place, he would find it difficult indeed to reënter it. These duties concluded, the officer dismissed the whole matter as a canard or one of the inexplicable manifestations of human folly, and departed, leaving quiet descending upon the distracted scene. It was the cook, Aunt Chaney, who had been sent at full speed for the surgeon. She had vaguely understood from old Ephraim's aspect and frantic mandate that something terrifying had befallen the household, and she did not realize until afterward the sacrifice of dignity her aspect must have presented as she ran, fatly waddling, over the hill, across the commons, and then up a path to a hospital on an eminence overlooking the town, formerly a Medical College. She was bonnetless, limping actively, for one of her large, loose slippers had gone, and gone forever. Its loss destroyed the equipoise of her gait; her unshod foot was pierced with stones and chilled with the damp ground; her sleeves were rolled up, her arms held out at a bandy angle, for her fingers were dripping with cake-batter, and she did not have sufficient composure to wring them free till she was following the surgeon home.