ared. Anne and Mary moved about softly, and when
everything was ready, sat down on opposite sides of the room to keep the
vigil. If the men were restless, Mary was to attend to them; Anne was
the subordinate, merely obeying Mary's orders. The place was dimly
lighted by two candles set in bottles; the timbers above were festooned
with cobwebs whitened with meal, and the floor was covered with its fine
yellow dust. A large spider came slowly out from behind a beam near by,
and looked at Anne; at least she thought he did. He was mealy too, and
she fell to wondering whether he missed the noise of the wheel, and
whether he asked himself what all these men meant by coming in and lying
down in rows upon his floor to disturb his peacefulness. At sunrise the
surgeon came in, but he was obliged to shake the student roughly before
he could awaken him from his heavy slumber. It was not until the third
day that the poor youth lost the half-mad expression which had shone in
his haggard face when they arrived, and began to look as though he was
composed of something besides big jaws, gaunt cheeks, and sunken eyes,
which had seemed to be all there was of him besides bones when they
first came.

The fever patients at Peterson's Mill were not Western men, like the
inmates of Number One and Number Two; they belonged to two New York
regiments. Mary Crane did excellent work among them, her best; her
systematic watchfulness, untiring vigilance, and strict rules shook the
hold of the fever, and in many cases routed the dismal spectre, and
brought the victims triumphantly back to hope of health again.

One morning Anne, having written a letter for one of the men, was
fanning him as he lay in his corner; the doors were open, but the air
was sultry. The man was middle-aged and gaunt, his skin was yellow and
lifeless, his eyes sunken. Yet the surgeon pronounced him out of danger;
it was now merely a question of care, patience, and nourishment. The
poor mill-hospital had so little for its sick! But boxes from the North
were at last beginning to penetrate even these defiles; one had arrived
during the previous night, having been dragged on a rude sledge over
places where wheels could not go, by the non-partisan horses, which were
now on their patient way with a load of provisions to a detachment of
Confederates camped, or rather mired, in the southern part of the
county. The contents of that box had made the mill-hospital glad; the
yellow-faced sk