to dress and go out for
a breath of fresh, sweet air to fortify her against the heavy
atmosphere of the sick wards.

It was not yet perfectly dark; the thin edge of the new moon traced
a pale curve in the western sky; frogs were trilling; a night-bird
sang in a laurel thicket unceasingly.

The evening was still, but the quiet was only comparative because,
always, all around her, the stirring and murmur of the vast army
never entirely ended.

But the drums and bugles, answering one another from hill to hill,
from valley to valley, had ceased; she saw the reddening embers of
thousands of camp fires through the dusk; every hill was jewelled,
every valley gemmed.

In the darkness she could hear the ground vibrate under the steady
tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see
them--could distinguish no motion against the black background of
the woods.

Standing there on the veranda, she listened to them marching by.
From the duration of the sound she judged it to be only one
regiment, probably a new one arriving from the North.

A little while afterward she heard on some neighbouring hillside
the far outbreak of hammering, the distant rattle of waggons, the
clash of stacked muskets. Then, in sudden little groups, scattered
starlike over the darkness, camp fires twinkled into flame. The
new regiment had pitched its tents.

It was a pretty sight; she walked out along the fence to see more
clearly, stepping aside to avoid collision with a man in the dark,
who was in a great hurry--a soldier, who halted to make his
excuses, and, instead, took her into his arms with a breathless
exclamation.

"Philip!" she faltered, trembling all over.

"Darling! I forgot I was not to touch you!" He crushed her hands
swiftly to his lips and let them drop.

"My little Ailsa! My--little--Ailsa!" he repeated under his
breath--and caught her to him again.

"Oh--darling--we mustn't," she protested faintly. "Don't you
remember, Philip? Don't you remember, dear, what we are to be to
one another?"

He stood, face pressed against her burning cheeks; then his arm
encircling her waist fell away.

"You're right, dear," he said with a sigh so naively robust, so
remarkably hearty, that she laughed outright--a very tremulous and
uncertain laugh.

"What a tragically inclined boy! I never before heard a
'thunderous sigh'; but I had read of them in poetry. Philip, tell
me instantly how you came here!"

"Ran the guar