Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/71

Rh he became better, and once more I felt as though I had breathed the air of freedom.

Haywood was also recovering, and I felt that I could leave them in safety, and go to Mason's Island. One branch of our hospital had been moved to Alexandria, and the steward, after a visit there, brought back the sad intelligence of the death of one of our best nurses. Squire Gager, who died of small-pox in the pest-house.

We shuddered to think of the death by that loathsome disease, from which it is no wonder that every civilized being shrinks in trembling horror, and mourned him as one of our noblest men—so patient with the irritable sick soldiers' fancies—so kind to all.

We could ill spare such men when the work which we came out do was only begun. But who shall tell when the harvest is ripe, and the reaper gathers in his own, grown golden and heavy for the fall? I went by way of Alexandria, looking in upon those whose constant attendant I had been for months, then crossed to Mason's Island, and took up my quarters in the camp.

My tent was made very cosy and comfortable; the boys ceiled it up, and laid a floor, and the Adjutant gave me his stove, which, insensate thing, black and bare as it was, seemed the dearest relic from the land of civilization—I could cook many a little delicacy over it for the sick. I had an iron bedstead, a chair, a stand made by the boys, and with my trunk I never felt richer in worldly possessions.