"In that case," said Webster, "as it is incumbent upon two members of the Advance Guard not to come all this distance for nothing, we shall be under the necessity of hunting out the groan. Ah!" and the speaker paused a moment. "By Jupiter it _is_ a groan. I heard it myself that time. It is here, under this shed!"
The long legs of Webster at once made a movement in that direction, followed by the shorter and more symmetrical ones of Crawford. They reached the door of the wood-house, opening towards the burned mansion. The door was unclosed, and they could look within. Just as they reached the door both heard another groan--quite sufficient to satisfy them that they were not in error as to the place from which the sound had proceeded. A faint red light from the fallen embers of the burning house shone within the rough shed from the narrow door--scarce enough, at first, to make objects distinctly visible; but as they gazed the eyes grew accustomed to the dim light and they could distinctly trace what the building contained. They stepped slowly within, no motion from the occupants giving indication that their presence was known; and this is what they saw--dimly, but clearly enough for the purposes of recognition.
On a straw pallet lay an old man, thin-faced and hollow-eyed, his scanty white hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. But the old man was not the most singular or the most painful feature of this spectacle. Beside him on the ground, kneeling, and rocking backward and forward with that peculiar motion so indicative of intense and hopeless grief when used by some of the European peasantry, was a young girl--apparently very young, very small and very girlish, though there was something about her which even in that dim light gave the impression that she was not a little girl, but a woman.