rward. "This is all nonsense, Miss Ward," he said,
"and you know it. Your cousin is in no state to be moved. Wait a week or
two, and he can go in safety. But do not dare to offer me your money
again; my kindness was to the soldier, not to the man, and as such he
can accept it. Come out and see him as often as you please. I shall not
intrude upon you. Pomp, take the lady home."

And the lady went.

Then began a remarkable existence for the four: a Confederate soldier
lying ill in the keeper's cottage of a national cemetery; a rampant
little rebel coming out daily to a place which was to her
anathema-maranatha; a cynical, misanthropic keeper sleeping on the floor
and enduring every variety of discomfort for a man he never saw
before--a man belonging to an idle, arrogant class he detested; and an
old black freedman allowing himself to be taught the alphabet in order
to gain permission to wait on his master--master no longer in law--with
all the devotion of his loving old heart. For the keeper had announced
to Pomp that he must learn his alphabet or go; after all these years of
theory, he, as a New-Englander, could not stand by and see precious
knowledge shut from the black man. So he opened it, and mighty dull work
he found it.

Ward De Rosset did not rally as rapidly as they expected. The
white-haired doctor from the town rode out on horseback, pacing slowly
up the graveled roadway with a scowl on his brow, casting, as he
dismounted, a furtive glance down toward the parade-ground. His horse
and his coat were alike old and worn, and his broad shoulders were bent
with long service in the miserably provided Confederate hospitals, where
he had striven to do his duty through every day and every night of those
shadowed years. Cursing the incompetency in high places, cursing the
mismanagement of the entire medical department of the Confederate army,
cursing the recklessness and indifference which left the men suffering
for want of proper hospitals and hospital stores, he yet went on
resolutely doing his best with the poor means in his control until the
last. Then he came home, he and his old horse, and went the rounds
again, he prescribing for whooping-cough or measles, and Dobbin waiting
outside; the only difference was that fees were small and good meals
scarce for both, not only for the man but for the beast. The doctor sat
down and chatted awhile kindly with De Rosset, whose father and uncle
had been dear friends of his i