emories came in troops
to bear her company.

They were with her now as she paced the veranda to and fro, to and
fro.

She heard Letty singing happily over her stew-pan in the kitchen;
the stir and breathing of the vast army was audible all around her
in the darkness. Presently she looked at her watch in the
moonlight, returned it to her breast.

"I'm ready, dear," she said, going to the kitchen door.

And another night on duty was begun--the last she ever was to spend
under the quiet roof of the Farm Hospital.

That night she sat beside the bed of a middle-aged man, a corporal
in a Minnesota regiment whose eyes had been shot out on picket.
Otherwise he was convalescent from dysentery. But Ailsa had seen
the convalescent camp, and she would not let him go yet.

So she read to him in a low, soothing voice, glancing from time to
time at the bandaged face. And, when she saw he was asleep, she
sat silent, hands nervously clasped above the Bible on her knee.
Then her lids closed for an instant as she recited a prayer for the
man she loved, wherever he might be that moon-lit night.

A zouave, terribly wounded on Roanoke Island, began to fret; she
rose and walked swiftly to him, and the big sunken eyes opened and
he said, humbly:

"I am sorry to inconvenience you, Mrs. Paige. I'll try to keep
quiet."

"You foolish fellow, you don't inconvenience me. What can I do for
you?"

His gaze was wistful, but he said nothing, and she bent down
tenderly, repeating her question.

A slight flush gathered under his gaunt cheek bones. "I guess I'm
just contrary," he muttered. "Don't bother about me, ma'am."

"You are thinking of your wife; talk to me about her, Neil."

It was what he wanted; he could endure the bandages. So, her cool
smooth hand resting lightly over his, where it lay on the sheets,
she listened to the home-sick man until it was time to give another
sufferer his swallow of lemonade.

Later she put on a gingham overgown, sprinkled it and her hands
with camphor, and went into the outer wards where the isolated
patients lay--where hospital gangrene and erysipelas were the
horrors. And, farther on, she entered the outlying wing devoted to
typhus. In spite of the open windows the atmosphere was heavy;
everywhere the air seemed weighted with the odour of decay.

As always, in spite of herself, she hesitated at the door. But the
steward on duty rose; and she took his candle and entered the place
of de