I thought so too. There are women and women; some are brave and some are not; I like the brave ones best. She became chief nurse at once. Lucky it is for a man, ill in such a place, to have a woman's care. I, still feeling remorse, although my reason told me I was not at fault, helped all I could. The snow ceased, and toward evening the colonel grew stronger. Dr. Ambrose had managed to close up the reopened wound and stop the bleeding, but a burning fever came over him and he began to talk very wildly. Then I saw how the things on which a man's mind is centred when he wakes come out again in sleep or delirium. His talk was all of the war and the old battles, which he was fighting as if he rode and charged in them again. I, who loved the Union, could not help feeling a deep sympathy for him, he seemed to have taken the matter so much to heart. When he rambled on to the end of the war,--that is, the end according to history,--and repeated again and again his declaration to stand out forever, I was touched, and touched very deeply. Some one brought him the news that Lee was dead. "I will not believe it," he cried, in his delirium. "It's a lie. He is living, and he will lead us again." He rose suddenly, and, fixing his fever-filled eyes upon me, demanded of me to bear witness that it was a lie. "Yes, colonel," I said, as soothingly as I could, "it's a lie: the general is living, and he is your commander still." I think I will get forgiveness for my own lie. After a while he sank into something which resembled sleep more and delirium less, and was quiet. Miss Hetherill stepped to the little door for air. Only she and I were there. "Miss Hetherill," I said, reproaching myself, "how you must blame me for bringing all this grief upon you and yours!" "You could not help it," she said, very gently, "and perhaps, as I told you before, it may be for the best, after all. A rough cure may be the best cure." Dr. Ambrose came up then and insisted that we should take rest while others watched. We fenced off a corner of the camp for Grace. I sought my own place, and was soon sound asleep. In the morning I found the colonel in delirium again, though not so violent as he had been in the early part of the night. He was talking about me. I seemed to weigh upon his conscience, as he had weighed upon mine. He had never meant to do it, he said. He would not have executed me, though he still seemed to think that his military duty commanded it. At any rate, he was apologizing to me in his sleep, when a man's talk speaks his thoughts and no falsehoods or evasions. "How could I execute him?" he said. "And we slept under the same blanket, too." The second attack of delirium did not last long, and Dr. Ambrose then said that the patient's progress was good: if we could only get him back to Fort Defiance he would guarantee his recovery.