The sound of moans, groans, shrieks, and prayers drowned all the noise their own entry might have made, and they stood in the shadow looking round them, quite unnoticed in the general confusion of that busy home of death.
There were perhaps a score or more of sufferers in the great room, and two nurses moving about amongst them, quickly and in none too tender a fashion.

A doctor was also there with a young man, his assistant; and at some bedsides he paused, whilst at others he gave a shake of the head, and went by without a word.

Indeed it seemed to the boys as though almost a quarter of the patients were dead men, they lay so still and rigid, and the purple patches upon the white skin stood out with such terrible distinctness.
A man suddenly put in his head from the open door at the other end and asked of anybody who could answer him: "Room for any more here ?" And the doctor's assistant, looking round, replied: "Room for four, if you will send and have these taken away." Almost immediately there came in two men, who bore away four corpses from the place, and in five minutes more the beds were full again, and the nurses were calculating how soon it would be possible to receive more, some now here being obviously in a dying state.

The bearers reported that the outer barn was full as well as all the house; but those without invariably died, whilst a portion of those brought in recovered.
Joseph and Benjamin had seen enough for their own curiosity.

It was a more terrible sight than they had anticipated, and they felt a great longing to get out of this stricken den into the purer air without.