"I'll get up," she said drowsily. "Why didn't Flannery call me?" "You can sleep for an hour or two yet, darling," cooed Letty, nestling close to her. "Mrs. Craig has taken old Bill Symonds, and they'll be on duty for two hours more." "How generous of Celia--and of old Symonds, too. Everybody seems to be so good to me here." "Everybody adores you, dear," whispered Letty, her lips against Ailsa's flushed cheek. "Don't you know it?" Ailsa laughed; and the laugh completed her awakening past all hope of further slumber. "You quaint little thing," she said, looking at Letty. "You certainly are the most engaging girl I ever knew." Letty merely lay and looked her adoration, her soft cheek pillowed on Ailsa's arm. Presently she said: "Do you remember the first word you ever spoke to me?" "Yes, I do." "And--you asked me to come and see you." "Who wouldn't ask you--little rosebud?" But Letty only sighed and closed her eyes; nor did she awaken when Ailsa cautiously withdrew her arm and slipped out of bed. She still had an hour and more; she decided to dress and go out for a breath of fresh, sweet air to fortify her against the heavy atmosphere of the sick wards. It was not yet perfectly dark; the thin edge of the new moon traced a pale curve in the western sky; frogs were trilling; a night-bird sang in a laurel thicket unceasingly. The evening was still, but the quiet was only comparative because, always, all around her, the stirring and murmur of the vast army never entirely ended. But the drums and bugles, answering one another from hill to hill, from valley to valley, had ceased; she saw the reddening embers of thousands of camp fires through the dusk; every hill was jewelled, every valley gemmed. In the darkness she could hear the ground vibrate under the steady tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see them--could distinguish no motion against the black background of the woods. Standing there on the veranda, she listened to them marching by. From the duration of the sound she judged it to be only one regiment, probably a new one arriving from the North. A little while afterward she heard on some neighbouring hillside the far outbreak of hammering, the distant rattle of waggons, the clash of stacked muskets. Then, in sudden little groups, scattered starlike over the darkness, camp fires twinkled into flame. The new regiment had pitched its tents. It was a pretty sight; she walked out along the fence to see more clearly, stepping aside to avoid collision with a man in the dark, who was in a great hurry--a soldier, who halted to make his excuses, and, instead, took her into his arms with a breathless exclamation. "Philip!" she faltered, trembling all over. "Darling! I forgot I was not to touch you!" He crushed her hands swiftly to his lips and let them drop. "My little Ailsa! My--little--Ailsa!" he repeated under his breath--and caught her to him again.