t-stretched hands, cheeks burning, eyes full of
entreaty.

"Oh, please let me go! I will squeeze into Doctor Hancocke's wagon with
Mammy Leezer, taking but little room. Very, oh, very sorely I have
longed to do something that would help in these days. Let me wait on the
wounded. I am strong and full of health, and almost a woman grown. I can
twist a bandage, make a posset, mix a medicine, feed the sick. I
prithee, let me go!"

The parson looked puzzled, Goodwife Kendall looked surprised.

"Dear maid," she said, "it is no easy thing to tend on wounded men. One
must be strong of nerve and firm of hand to deal with the injured."

"Have I asked for smelling-salts or shown weakness in any way when bad
news came?" asked Sally. "Try me, but try me! I think I could go through
fire or through flood to help our men. Pray let me go!"

But never a word said Maid Sally about its being her kinsman that lay
among the wounded.

And Parson Kendall said:

"I like well thy high spirit, maiden, and as a woman goeth in our
company,"--he turned toward his wife,--"what think you, good Matilda, of
letting the wench come with us?"

"I think," said Goodwife Kendall, "that since she so much desireth it,
we might let her go."

CHAPTER XXIII.

MAID SALLY AND HER FAIRY PRINCE

While she was making ready, Sally kept saying:

"I am coming, Fairy Prince, I am coming!"

And a sweet bird of hope was singing in her ears that all would yet be
well with the brave Dream lad of her girlish years.

"I will serve the others too," she said, "for in good faith I love my
country well."

At Great Bridge all was bustle and confusion. But the wounded had been
carried into a long, low building, really a tobacco warehouse, now
turned into hospital barracks.

Doctor Hancocke, who had knowledge of diseases and wounds as well as of
drugs and medicines, made himself both useful and welcome. He soon found
Lionel among the badly wounded, his hurt having come through a spent
ball that hurled the young man against a gun-carriage with such force
that his back was injured and one shoulder put out of joint. Then, as
fever had set in, the young man was in a bad way.

Sally could well have both laughed and cried at Mammy Leezer when they
told her Lionel's case was thought to be serious.

She put on her most dragoon-like air, and seemed defying the whole army
to tell her that again.

"Who say dat dat boy am hurt powerful bad?" she sniffed. "Ain't the