tand that such is the purpose of the war we can get
nowhere--accomplish nothing. But there, dear--I didn't mean to say so
much. There is always one thing about which there can be no dispute--I
love my little girl----"

He slipped his arm about her tenderly again.

"I'm proud of the work you're doing for our soldiers. They tell me in
the big hospital that you're an angel. I've always known it, but I'm
glad other people are beginning to find it out. In all the horrors of
this tragedy there's one ray of sunshine for me--the light that shines
from your eyes!"

He bent and kissed her again:

"Run now, and don't miss your boat."

In the five swift days of tender service which followed, Betty Winter
forgot her own heartache and loneliness in the pity, pathos, and horror
of the scenes she witnessed--the drawn white faces--the charred flesh,
the scream of pain from the young, the sigh of brave men, the last
messages of love--the gasp and the solemn silences of eternity.

When the strain of the first rush had ended and the time to follow the
lines of ambulance wagons back to Washington drew near, the old anguish
returned to torture her soul. She told herself it was all over, and yet
she knew that somewhere in that vast city of tents, stretching for miles
over the hills and valleys about Falmouth Heights, was John Vaughan. She
had put him resolutely out of her life. She said this a hundred
times--yet she was quietly rejoicing that his name was not on that black
roll of seventeen thousand. All doubt had been removed by the
announcement in the _Republican_ of his promotion to the rank of
Captain for gallantry on the field of Chancellorsville.

She hoped that he had freed himself at last from evil associates. She
couldn't be sure--there were ugly rumors flying about the hospital of
the use of whiskey in the army. These rumors were particularly busy with
Hooker's name.

Seated alone in the quiet moonlight before the field hospital, the balmy
air of the South which she drew in deep breaths was bringing back the
memory of another now. The pickets had been at their usual friendly
tricks of trading tobacco and coffee and exchanging newspapers. From a
Richmond paper she had just learned that Ned Vaughan had fought in Lee's
army at Chancellorsville. Somewhere beyond the silver mirror of the
Rappahannock he was with the men in grey to-night. Her heart in its
loneliness went out to him in a wave of tender sympathy. Again she lived
o