I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them! don\'t leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers, for your lives, fly!"

And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his followers.

Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper\'s outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte\'s cry from the bedside--"Richard! Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets "Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but you two! go back!"

A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are the girls?"

"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is calling you!"

I ran to Ferry\'s door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must get him away at once anyhow. Isn\'t my wagon still here?--oh, thank God! there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"

A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a half turn at the lower hall\'s back door, having been in hiding behind the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to call the Lieutenant an............