k you, that I should see if one
or two of the Sanitary women would not come as far as this to
make things decent. So, of course, I write to you. Don't you
think mother could spare you to spend the winter here? It will
be rough, of course; but it is all in the good cause. Perhaps
you know some nice women,--well, not like you, of course; but
still, disinterested and sensible, who would come too. Think of
this carefully, I beg you, and talk to father and mother.
Worster says we may have three hundred boys in hospital before
Christmas. If Jubal Early should come this way, I don't know how
many more. Talk with mother and father.

Always yours,
HORACE BARTLETT.

P. S. I have shown Worster what I have written; he encloses a
sort of official letter which may be of use. He says, "Show this
to Dr. Hayward; get them to examine you and the others, and then
the government, on his order, will pass you on." I enclose this,
because, if you come, it will save time.

Of course Huldah went. Grace Starr, her married sister, went with her,
and Mrs. Philbrick, and Anna Thwart. That was the way they happened to
be all together in the Methodist Church that had been, of Talbot Court
House, as Christmas holidays drew near, of the year of grace, 1863.

She and her friends had been there quite long enough to be wonted to the
strangeness of December in the open air. On her little table in front of
the desk of the church were three or four buttercups in bloom, which she
had gathered in an afternoon walk, with three or four heads of
hawksweed. "The beginning of one year," Huldah said, "with the end of
the other." Nay, there was even a stray rose which Dr. Sprigg had found
in a farmer's garden. Huldah came out from the vestry, where her own bed
was, in the gray of the morning, changed the water for the poor little
flowers, sat a moment at the table to look at last night's memoranda,
and then beckoned to the ward-master, and asked him, in a whisper, what
was the movement she had heard in the night,--"Another alarm from
Early?"

"No, Miss; not an alarm. I saw the Colonel's orderly as he passed. He
stopped here for Dr. Fenno's case. There had come down an express from
General Mitchell, and the men were called without the bugle, each man
separately; not a horse was to neigh, if they could help it. And really,
Miss, they were off in twenty minutes."

"Off, who are off?"