It seemed as if it pleased God to remove from the work those who have been most useful to it. His will be done!" Nurse Drake's body was brought to Scutari, and Miss Nightingale erected a small marble cross over it in the cemetery. It was no time, when members of the rank-and-file were falling at the post of duty, for the chief to listen to counsels of medical prudence. Nor, indeed, at any time did Miss Nightingale harbour even a passing thought of what would have seemed to her an act of military desertion. She remained till the end of the war came, and till the last transport had sailed; working indefatigably as ever, and in some respects in new spheres of usefulness, both in the Crimea and at Scutari; to what good effect we shall hear in later chapters, but at great cost to her own comfort and bodily strength. She had been appointed, as she used to say, to a subsidiary post in the Queen's Army[178]; the humblest post, it might be, but still a post of duty. The men had dared and suffered; and Florence Nightingale was resolved to show that a woman too had strength to suffer and endure. [178] She was especially pleased when in March 1856 her name appeared for the first time in General Orders; see below, p. 293. During the weeks of convalescence at Scutari, Miss Nightingale used sometimes to walk at evening on the shore, in full sight of that view which, when she had first come there, they told her was the finest in the world, but which, in the crush of work, she had no time to enjoy.[179] She sent a letter to her people at home describing one such evening walk, and it was read out in the family circle. Lady Byron, who was staying with them at the time, heard it read, and said that it was "like a hymn--simple and deep-toned." She described how, on the opposite side, the city of Constantinople was defined against the burning sky of the setting sun, but the outline was changed by the fall of some mounds in an earthquake. Near her were the graves of the heroic dead, the thousands with whom, she said, she felt identified. "It went into my heart," wrote Lady Byron, "as the poetry of fact--for she has made poetry fact." The letter went on to speak of the British burying-ground at Scutari, and Miss Nightingale added these lines:-- "They are not here!" No, not beneath that sod, And yet not far away, For they can mingle their new life from God With living souls, not clay. And they, "the heroic dead," will softly pour Into thy spirit's ear A music human still, but sad no more, To tell thee they are near-- Near thee with higher ministering aid Thy heart-work to return, So that each sacrifice that love has made A victory shall earn![180] [179] Above, p. 173.