into the Seventh, and I'm only here to see Elizabeth before I go."

"Nonsense, boy!" says Madam, trembling, though. "We'll see what your
father has to say, first."

"My father only wishes he had a dozen sons, ma'am!" he told her, proud
as Lucifer. "Lisbet, can I speak with you?"

She went directly to him, and they walked, holding hands, behind the
cedar grove. She told me afterward that he just said:

"Will you wait till I come back, Lisbet?"

And she answered, "Why, of course, Dick!" They parted a promised
couple. Madam was all shaky, but she kissed him good-bye, and let him
put a little blue-stoned ring on Miss Lisbet's hand--there was a splash
of red paint on it from the house, and mother fair turned white when I
told her. "They'll never wed," she said, "that's certain sure! Poor
young people!"

But the paint wasn't for blood, after all, for he never got a scratch.
He was handsome enough in his new uniform, and more than one envied my
Miss Lisbet when she waved him good-bye on the train--they were off for
Baltimore.

"Rhoda," says she to me, after a few weeks of waiting, "I can't bear
this! Us eating and drinking so easy, and those poor boys dying--it's
not right. I must and shall go as nurse!"

And we could do nothing with her--she'd hardly sleep. It was Dr.
Stanchon found the way to handle her.

"Dear child," he says at last, "why not do as I do--send a substitute?
I sent my boy, because I'm the only doctor left here, now, and people
must be born and die, you know, war or no war," says he. "I'd far
rather have gone. Now, it's out of the question for you, for many
reasons, but if your aunt would give you your dress-money and you gave
up a summer at the mountains, you could pay a good, settled woman, of
experience, and there's many would love to go."

Well, she seized on that, the generous creature, and got it out of
Madam, and we fitted out a respectable widow-woman mother often had to
help her, and sent her to one of those Southern cities--I forget now.
She wrote up only that there was mostly blacks for waiting on one, and
food poor and scarce. But Master Dick sent word that she kept the
fever away for a mile around her, and the officers thereabouts gave her
a long piece of writing and a medal after all was over, and the Rebels
a silver cup--she cared for all alike, whatever the uniform. The
little house she had was built up into a hospital, later, and she lived
and died there, and only ca