s before they separate. She will
say that something with a genuine human pride; and the end of the hunt
for red-caps may be, conspicuously, success in finding them; but still
more to the purpose, it will be the child's establishment on a better
basis--a securer basis of equality--than she has occupied before. She
forgets about Dalton and poverty. She thinks about camps and honor. She
has something to claim of all the world. She is the citizen of a great
nation. She bears the name of one who is fighting for the Union, who
_has_ fought, and fought so well that those in authority have beckoned
him up higher. Why, it is as though a crown were placed on her dear
father's head.

II.

Going out of quiet and beautiful green Dalton, and into the hospital of
Frere's Landing, 't is a wonderful change we make.

The silence of one place is as remarkable as the silence of the other,
perhaps. That of the hospital does not resemble that of the hamlet,
however. At times it grows oppressive and appalling, being the silence
of anguish or of death. A stranger reaching Dalton in the night might
wonder in the morning if there were in reality any passage out of it,
for there the lake, on one of whose western slopes is the
"neighborhood," seems locked in completely by the hills, and an ascent
towards heaven is apparently the only way of egress. Yet there's
another way; for I am not writing this true story among celestial
altitudes for you. I returned from Dalton by a mundane road.

Out of Frere's Hospital, however, _its_ silence and seclusion, many a
stranger never found his way except by the high mountains of
transfiguration, in the chariots of fire, driven by the horsemen of
Heaven, covered with whose glory they departed.

Through the wards of this well-ordered hospital a lady passed one night,
and, entering a small apartment separated from the others, advanced with
noiseless step to a bedside, and there sat down. You may guess if her
heart was beating fast, and whether it was with difficulty that she kept
her gray eyes clear of tears. There were about her traces of long and
hurried journeying.

Under no limitations of caution had she passed so noiselessly through
the wards. Involuntary was that noiselessness,--involuntary also the
surprise with which one and another of the more wakeful patients turned
to follow her, with hopeless, weary eyes, as she passed on. Now and then
some feeble effort was made to attract her attention and ar