aggard features of
disease, such as mark the population of a sickly climate, were often
encountered upon the road, directing their wearied march towards the
head-quarters of the republican army. The rigors of the Southern summer
had not yet abated; and it was with painful steps in the deep sand, amid
clouds of suffocating dust, that these little detachments prosecuted
their journey.

Mildred, so far from sinking under the weariness and increasing
hardships of her present toils, seemed to be endued with a capacity for
sustaining them much beyond anything that could have been believed of
her sex. Her courage grew with the difficulties that beset her. She
looked composedly upon the obstacles before her, and encountered them,
not only without a murmur, but even with a cheerfulness to which she had
hitherto been a stranger. The steadiness of her onward march, her
unrepining patience, and the gentle solicitude with which she turned the
thoughts of her companions from herself, and forbade the supposition
that her powers were over-taxed, showed how deeply her feelings were
engaged in her enterprise, and how maturely her mind had taken its
resolution.

"One never would have guessed," said Horse Shoe, towards the close of
the second day after they had entered North Carolina, "that a lady so
daintily nursed as you was at home, Mistress Mildred, could have ever
borne this here roughing of it through these piney woods. But I have
made one observation, Miss Lindsay, that no one can tell what they are
fit for till they are tried; and on the back of that I have another,
that when there's a great stir that rouses up a whole country, it don't
much signify whether they are man or woman, they all get roused alike.
'Pon my word, ma'am, I have seen men--who think themselves sodgers
too--that would be onwilling to trust themselves at this time o' year
through such a dried up piece of pine barren as we have been travelling
over for two days past."

"You remember the fable of the willow and the oak, Mr. Robinson,"
replied Mildred, smiling; "the storm may bring down the sturdy tree, but
the supple shrub will bend before it without breaking."

"I'm not much given to religious takings-on," said the sergeant, "but
sometimes a notion comes into my head that looks a little that way, and
that is, when God appoints a thing to be done, he gives them that's to
do it all the wherewithals. Now, as Major Butler is a good man and a
brave sodger--God ble