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.
They were grisly rumours.

In the neat wards of the Farm Hospital, with its freshly swept and sprinkled floors, its cots in rows, its detailed soldier nurses and the two nurses from Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood, its sick-diet department, its medical stores, its two excellent surgeons, these rumours found little credence.
And now, here in the vicinity, Ailsa's delicate nostrils shrank from the stench arising from the "Four Camps"; and she saw the emaciated forms lining the hillside, and she heard the horrible and continuous coughing.
"Do you know," she said to Letty the next morning, "I am going to write to Miss Dix and inform her of conditions in that camp." And she did so, perfectly conscious that she was probably earning the dislike of the entire medical department.

But hundreds of letters like hers had already been sent to Washington, and already the Sanitary Commission was preparing to take hold; so, when at length one morning an acknowledgment of her letter was received, no notice was taken of her offer to volunteer for service in that loathsome camp, but the same mail brought orders and credentials and transportation vouchers for herself and Letty.
Letty was still asleep, but Ailsa went up and waked her when the hour for her tour of duty approached.
"What do you think!" she said excitedly.

"We are to pack up our valises and go aboard the _Mary Lane_ to-morrow.