Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/67

Rh and I had taken the hurried peep at home and children, and the uncertainty of the next meeting filled me with sadness, which almost ripened into actual homesickness, when I beheld the great barren church, which the hand of war had arrested in its completion.

The gaunt skeleton, with its huge ribs uncovered, stood grinning, waiting for the sick to enter the door, and my work lay before me. Any unfinished building appears desolate and gloomy—we shudder as though the frame work of some human body stood before us, waiting to be clothed in fleshy habiliments.

I could not remain there until some arrangements could be made for comparative comfort, and while the boys procured lumber, and finished me off quite a comfortable little room, I staid with a Union family—a Mrs. Chapel by name; and as we had only five names on our sick-list, and none in immediate danger, the work was lighter than with the burthen of anxiety weighing down the heart.