of fresh stores to be ordered or
unpacked from the pyramids of muddy boxes and barrels in the courts.

There was also the daily need of food and a breath of fresh air;
and there were, sometimes, letters to read, None came to Ailsa from
Berkley. No letters came to Letty at all, except from Dr. Benton,
who wrote, without any preliminary explanation of why he wrote at
all, once every fortnight with absolute regularity.

What he had to say in his letters Ailsa never knew, for Letty, who
had been touched and surprised by the first one and had read it
aloud to Ailsa, read no more of the letters which came to her from
Dr. Benton. And Ailsa asked her nothing.

Part of Colonel Arran's regiment of lancers was now in
Washington--or near it, encamped to the east of Meridian Hill, in a
field beyond Seventh Street--at least these were the careful
directions for posting letters given her by Captain Hallam, who
wrote her cheerfully and incessantly; and in every letter he
declared himself with a patient and cordial persistence that
perhaps merited something more enthusiastic than Ailsa's shy and
brief replies.

Colonel Arran had been to see her twice at her hospital that
winter; he seemed grayer, bigger than ever in his tight blue and
yellow cavalry uniform; and on both occasions he had spoken of
Berkley, and had absently questioned her; and after both visits she
had lain awake, her eyes wide in the darkness, the old pain
stirring dully in her breast. But in the duties of the morning she
forgot sorrow, forgot hope, and found strength and peace in a duty
that led her ever amid the shadows of pain and death.

Once Hallam obtained leave, and made the journey to the Farm
Hospital; but it had been a hard day for her, and she could
scarcely keep awake to talk to him. He was very handsome, very
bronzed, very eager and determined as a wooer; and she did not
understand just how it happened, but suddenly the world's misery
and her own loneliness overwhelmed her, and she broke down for the
first time. And when Captain Hallam went lightly away about his
business, and she lay on her mattress beside Letty, she could feel,
furtively, a new jewel on the third finger of her left hand, and
fell asleep, wondering what she had done, and why--too tired to
really care.

The sick continued to drift North; new regiments continued to
arrive; the steady, tireless welding of the army was going on all
around her, night and day; and the clamour of i