e raw mass something, that was slowly beginning
to resemble an army.

Through the wards of their hospital Ailsa and Letty saw the
unbroken column of the sick pass northward or deathward; from their
shuttered window they beheld endless columns arriving--cavalry,
infantry, artillery, engineers, all seeking their allotted fields
or hillsides, which presently blossomed white with tents and grew
blue and hazy with the smoke of camp fires.

All day long, rain or sun, the landscape swarmed with men and
horses; all day long bugle answered bugle from hill to hill; drums
rattled at dawn and evening; the music from regimental and brigade
bands was almost constant, saluting the nag at sunset, or, with
muffled drums, sounding for the dead, or crashing out smartly at
guard-mount, or, on dress parade, playing the favorite, "Evening
Bells."

Leaning on her window ledge when off duty, deadly tired, Ailsa
would listen dully to the near or distant strains, wondering at the
strangeness of her life; wondering what it all was coming to.

But if life was strange, it was also becoming very real and very
full as autumn quickened into winter, and the fever waxed fiercer
in every regiment.

Life gave her now scant time for brooding--scarce time for thought
at all. There were no other women at the Farm Hospital except the
laundresses. Every regiment in the newly formed division encamped
in the vicinity furnished one man from each company for hospital
work; and from this contingent came their only relief.

But work was what Ailsa needed, and what Letty needed, too. It
left them no chance to think of themselves, no leisure for
self-pity, no inclination for it in the dreadful daily presence of
pestilence and death.

So many, many died; young men, mostly. So many were sent away,
hopelessly broken, and very, very young. And there was so much to
do--so much!--instruments and sponges and lint to hold for
surgeons; bandages, iced compresses, medicines to hand to
physicians; and there were ghastly faces to be washed, and filthy
bodies to be cleansed, and limp hands to be held, and pillows to be
turned, and heads to be lifted. And there were letters to be
written for sick boys and dying boys and dead boys; there was tea
and lemonade and whisky and wine to be measured out and given;
there was broth to be ordered and tasted and watched, delicacies to
be prepared; clothing to be boiled; inventories to be made of
dwindling medical supplies and