In the meantime the stillness was terrible. Even the
wounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited their fate
in silence.
Alone in the room, Mercy's first look was directed to the bed.
The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish at
the close of twilight. Separated, on their arrival at the
cottage, by the duties required of the nurse, they had only met
again in the captain's room. The acquaintance between them had
been a short one; and it had given no promise of ripening into
friendship. But the fatal accident had roused Mercy's interest in
the stranger. She took the candle, and approached the corpse of
the woman who had been literally killed at her side.
She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night at
the stillness of the dead face.
It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be
forgotten afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad;
the eyes unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably
small. With tender hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair and
arranged the crumpled dress. "Not five minutes since," she
thought to herself, "I was longing to change places with _you!_"
She turned from the bed with a sigh.
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