“When our Sisters of the Holy Cross first appeared in the wards, the patients themselves looked at us sullenly and askance.  I heard one say:  ’Why can’t they take off those white-winged sun-bonnets in the wards?’ And another sneered:  ’Sun-bonnets!  Huh!  They look like busted white parasols!’ But, Mrs. Paige, our white ‘sun-bonnets’ have already become to them the symbol they love most, after the flag.  Be of good courage.  Your silver-gray garb and white cuffs will mean much to our soldiers before this battle year is ended.”

That evening Ailsa and Letty drove back to the Parm Hospital in their ambulance, old black Cassius managing his mules with alternate bursts of abuse and of praise.  First he would beat upon his mules with a flat stick which didn’t hurt, but made a loud racket; then, satisfied, he would loll in his seat singing in melodious and interminable recitative: 

  An’ I hope to gain de prommis’ lan’,
    Yaas I do,
    ’Deed I do. 
  Lor’ I hope to gain de prommis’ lan’,
    Dat I do,
  An’ dar I’ll flap ma wings an’ take ma stan’,
    Yaas I will,
    ’Deed I will,
  An’ I’ll tune ma harp an’ jine de Shinin’ Ban’
    Glory, Glory,
  I hope to gain de prommis’ lan’!

And over and over the same shouted melody, interrupted only by an outburst of reproach for his mules.

They drove back through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their passes; they passed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward Alexandria.  Everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, skylarking—­everywhere the earth was covered with them.

They passed the camp for new recruits, where the poor “fresh fish” awaited orders to join regiments in the field to which they had been assigned; they passed the camp for stragglers and captured deserters; the camp for paroled prisoners; the evil-smelling convalescent camp, which, still under Surgeon General Hammond’s Department, had not yet been inspected by the Sanitary Commission.

An officer, riding their way, talked with them about conditions in this camp, where, he said, the convalescents slept on the bare ground, rain or shine; where there were but three surgeons for the thousands suffering from intestinal and throat and lung troubles, destitute, squalid, unwarmed by fires, unwashed, wretched, forsaken by the government that called them to its standard.

It was the first of that sort of thing that Ailsa and Letty had seen.

After the battles in the West—­particularly after the fall of Fort Donnelson—­terrible rumours were current in the Army of the Potomac and in the hospitals concerning the plight of the wounded—­of new regiments that had been sent into action with not a single medical officer, or, for that matter, an ounce of medicine, or of lint in its chests.