audience to other scenes wherein she had won her first renown. This was Surgeon-Major Vincent Ambler. "I was sick in hospital at Balaclava," he said, "and she nursed me through a long illness of Crimean fever. She was with me, I might almost say, night and day, and it is to her good nursing and energetic attention I owe my recovery. Previous to my illness I had had experience of her friendship when at Scutari, where the hospitals were crammed with dead and dying, and cholera was carrying off hundreds of victims a day; it was amid such scenes as this that I constantly beheld Miss Nightingale." Scenes not quite so terrible, but yet not entirely different, had been witnessed at this time in other fields of war; and Miss Nightingale, though no longer able to be in the midst of them herself, played some part, nevertheless, in ministering to the sick through her pupils, and in seeking to remedy defects in administration which the test of war had once more revealed. To these scenes, leaving Lord Ripon's measures trembling in the balance, we must now turn. [201] For the particulars, see Bibliography A, Nos. 97-99, 109-111. V The Egyptian campaign of 1882 called for female nurses, and Miss Nightingale worked at high pressure in selecting them, and arranging details of their outfit. "I have been working some days," she told Mrs. Hawthorn (Aug. 3, 1882), "from 4.30 A.M. till 10 P.M." Mrs. Deeble, of Netley, was in command of the female nursing corps, twenty-four strong, in which several old pupils of the Nightingale School at St. Thomas's were enrolled. They wrote repeatedly to their "Chief" at home, and she sent them constant messages of advice and encouragement. "A thousand thanks for your dear kind letter, which seems to have given me fresh vigour to combat against our many difficulties." "How good and kind you are to send me that welcome telegram. A few words now and then from you are so cheering." There are hundreds of such notes. The spirit of an old campaigner revived in Miss Nightingale as she read of stirring deeds, whether earlier in South Africa or now in Egypt. Nor had her "children" in the army altogether forgotten their old friend. There were four men, wounded at Majuba, who were detained for some weeks in hospital at Netley. They spent their time of convalescence in making a patchwork quilt, and asked that it should be sent from them "to Florence Nightingale." In November 1882 the Guards began to return from Egypt. A regiment of them (Grenadiers) was under the command of Colonel Philip Smith, a nephew of Sir Harry Verney, who persuaded Miss Nightingale to drive to the station to see their arrival. She was deeply moved:--