sir."

"We presumed that you were taking that view of the matter, from your
course," answered the Aide calmly. "I am not here to argue the matter
with you, but simply to direct you to consider yourself under
arrest. Charges are being prepared against you, to which I will add
specifications based on this interview. Good afternoon, sir." The
Aide saluted stiffly and moved away, leaving the Surgeon in a state
of collapse at the prospect of what he had brought upon himself by his
injudicious contumacy. Mis Rachel was in that state of wonderment
that comes to pupils at seeing their teachers rebel agains their own
precepts. The Surgeon was too much engrossed in his own affairs to pay
farther heed to her. He tapped a bell.

"Orderly," he said, to the soldier who responded, "conduct this young
woman to Dr. Denslow. Inform him that she is to be with us as a nurse,
and ask him to be kind enough to assign her suitable quarters. Good
afternoon, ma'am."

In another office, much smaller and far less luxuriously furnished,
she found Dr. Denslow, a hazel-eyed, brown-bearded man of thirty, whose
shoulder-straps bore the modest bars of Captain. The reader has already
made his acquaintance. He received her with the pleasant, manly sympathy
for her sex, which had already made him one of the most popular of
family physicians in the city where he was practicing at the outbreak of
the war.

Rachel's depressed spirits rose again at his cordial reception.

"I am so busy," he said, after a brief exchange of commonplaces, "that
I'll not have the time to give you much information this afternoon as to
your duties, and I know that you are so fatigued with your journey and
the heat that you will not care to do anything but rest and refresh
yourself. I will therefore show you immediately to your quarters."

"This will be your field of labor," he said, as he led her down the long
aisle between rows of cots toward her room. "It's not a cheerful one to
contemplate at first. Human suffering is always a depressing spectacle,
and you will see here more of it and more varied agony than you can find
anywhere outside of an army hospital's walls. But as the deed is so is
the duty, and the glory of doing it. To one who wants to serve God
and his fellow-creatures--which I take it is the highest form of
religion--here is an opportunity that he may bless God for giving him.
Here he can earn a brighter crown than is given them who die at the
stake for opinion