Following being left for dead after the defeat at Minersville, Sergeant Elbert King of Reynolds' Battery recovers and hides on the boundaries of a Southern home. He first encounters Jean Denslow here, and hears her furious outpouring of opposition to her forced marriage to a Southern officer that night. He also learns that the victorious Southerners are planning a flank attack on Rosecrans' entrenched and withdrawing army. In the same twenty-four hours, his efforts to warn his army of its perils land him in a more close than friendly relationship with this Lady of the South, and he is promoted to lieutenant.
Excerpt:
"I now recall our part in the battle merely in a series of detached pictures, having dull, blank spaces between. Nevertheless, how vividly bright with color each separate scene photographed itself upon the retina of the eye. I remember our battery first going into action along the western edge of the old cemetery, among the billowy graves, the cracked overturned stones; I recall the mass of green leaves, checkered by red blossoms, where the vine clambered over the large monument at one rear and how I entangled my foot in the creepers and nearly fell. I shall never forget the ghastly white face of Rosecran's side."