five dollars per week, each, they were allowed to sleep, and they took
their meals below.

There were at the date of their arrival thirty-nine sick men in the
hospital, and six lay unburied in the dead-house. Two or three others
died, and when they left, five or six weeks afterward, all had
recovered, sufficiently at least to bear removal, save three whom they
left convalescing. The young volunteer who had fastened his hope of life
on their coming, had been able to be removed to his home, at Penn Yan,
and they afterwards learned that he had entirely recovered his health.

Under their reign, cleanliness, order, quiet, and comfortable food, had
taken the place of the discomfort that previously existed. The sick were
encouraged by sympathy, and stimulated by it, and though they had
persisted in their effort through great hardship, and even danger, for
they were very near the enemy's lines, they felt themselves fully
rewarded for all their toils and sacrifices.

During the month of January, their patients having nearly all recovered,
Mrs. and Miss Gibbons, cheerfully obeyed a request to proceed to
Winchester, and take their places in the Seminary Hospital there. This
hospital was at that time devoted to the worst cases of wounded.

There were a large number of these in this place, most of them severely
wounded, as has been said, and many of them dangerously so. The closest
and most assiduous care was demanded, and the ladies found themselves at
once in a position to tax all their strength and efforts. They were in
this hospital over four months, and afterwards at Strasburg, where they
were involved in the famous retreat from that place, when the enemy took
possession, and held the hospital nurses, even, as prisoners, till the
main body of their army was safely on the road that led to Dixie.

Many instances of that retreat are of historical interest, but space
forbids their repetition here. It is enough to state that these ladies
heroically bore the discomfort of their position, and their own losses
in stores and clothing, regretting only that it was out of their power
to secure the comforts of the wounded, who were hurried from their
quarters, jolted in ambulances in torture, or compelled to drag their
feeble limbs along the encumbered road.

After the retreat, and the subsequent abandonment of the Valley by the
enemy, Mrs. Gibbons and her daughter returned for a short time to their
home in New York.

Their rest, h