list a mistake. Am here, wounded, but not dangerously.
Will write.

W. H."

* * * * *

It was sent from Harper's Ferry. And two hours later, Mrs. Heathcote,
accompanied by Bagshot, was on her way to Harper's Ferry.

It was a wild journey. If any man had possessed authority over Helen,
she would never have been allowed to make it; but no man did possess
authority. Mrs. Heathcote, having money, courage, and a will of steel,
asked advice from no one, did not even wait for Miss Teller, but
departed according to a swift purpose of her own, accompanied only by
Bagshot, who was, however, an efficient person, self-possessed, calm,
and accustomed to travelling. It was uncertain whether they would be
able to reach Harper's Ferry, but this uncertainty did not deter Helen:
she would go as far as she could. In her heart she was not without hope
that Mrs. Heathcote could relax the rules and military lines of even the
strictest general in the service. As to personal fear, she had none.

At Baltimore she was obliged to wait for an answer to the dispatch she
had sent on starting, and the answer was long in coming. To pass away
the time, she ordered a carriage and drove about the city; many persons
noticed her, and remembered her fair, delicate, and impatient face,
framed in its pale hair. At last the answer came. Captain Heathcote was
no longer at Harper's Ferry; he had been sent a short distance northward
to a town where there was a better hospital, and Mrs. Heathcote was
advised to go round by the way of Harrisburg, a route easier and safer,
if not in the end more direct as well.

She followed this advice, although against her will. She travelled
northward to Harrisburg, and then made a broad curve, and came southward
again, within sight of the green hills later to be brought into
unexpected and long-enduring fame--the hills around Gettysburg. But now
the whole region was fair with summer, smiling and peaceful; the farmers
were at work, and the grain was growing. After some delays she reached
the little town, with its barrack-like, white-washed hospital, where her
husband was installed under treatment for a wound in his right arm,
which, at first appearing serious, had now begun to improve so rapidly
that the surgeon in charge decided that he could soon travel northward,
and receive what further care he needed among the comforts of his own
home.

At the end of five days, therefore, they started,