or the heavy wagons; moving, slender and fine, upon the trampled verge of the road, ready with a friendly nod, a smile, a word—a beautiful woman walking as safely upon a military road as in a hedged garden. The road loved to see her; she was like a glowing rose in a land of metal and ore. And when a mile from town, perhaps, she met her husband, when, turning, she came with him back through the sunset light, when they moved together, of a height, happy, it was as though beings of another race trod the road. There needed no herald to say, “These are gods!” But much of the time Désirée was alone. She asked for work at the hospital and was given it, and here she spent several hours of each day. There were no wounded now at Dalton, only the ill, and these in the wisely cared-for, steadily built-up army, lessened always in number. Suffering there was, however, now as always; moanings and tossings, delirium, ennui, pain to be assuaged, crises to be met, eyes to be closed, convalescence to be tended. In Dalton as elsewhere the Confederate women nursed with tenderness the Confederate ill. Désirée did her part, coming like something cordial, something golden, into the whitewashed ward. When her hours were over, back she came to the house behind the syringas, bathed and dressed, and ate with Miss Sophia and Miss Amanda a Confederate dinner. Then for an hour they sewed and knitted and scraped lint; then, when the afternoon had lengthened, she took the palmetto hat she had braided and went out of the lace handkerchief yard to the road and walked upon it. Miss Sophia and Miss Amanda had attacks of remonstrance. “Dear Mrs. Cary, I don’t think you should! A young woman and—pardon us if we seem too personal—and beautiful! It’s not, of course, that you would suffer the least insult—but it is not customary for a lady to walk for pleasure on a public road where all kinds of serious things are going on—” Désirée laughed. “Not if they are interesting things? Dear Miss Sophia, I stopped at the post-office and brought you a letter.” Miss Sophia put out her hand for the letter, but she held to her text a moment longer. “I do not think that Captain Cary should allow it,” she said. The letter was from Richmond, from the cousin who had gone to nurse her son. Miss Sophia read it aloud. MY DEAR SOPHIA:—