One trimly-gauntleted hand carried a dainty whip; the other supported the long skirts of her riding habit as she moved through the ward with such a newly-added grace and beauty that the patients, to whom her appearance had become familiar, raised in their beds to follow the lovely spectacle with their eyes, and then turned to each other to comment upon her beauty.
At the door she found an orderly, holding a spirited young mare, handsome enough for a Queen's palfrey, and richly caparisoned.
She sprang into the saddle and adjusted her seat with the easy grace of an accomplished horsewoman.
A squad of "Convalescents" standing outside, and a group of citizes watched her with an admiration too palpable for her to be unconscious of it.
She smiled pleasantly upon the soldiers, and gave them a farewell bow as she turned the mare's head away, to which they responded with cheers.
A few hundred yards further, where an angle in the street would take her from their view, she turned around again and waved her handkerchief to them.

The boys gave her another ringing cheer, with waving hats and handkerchiefs; her steed broke into a canter and she disappeared from view.
"Where is she going ?" asked one of the soldiers.
"I don't know," responded another gallantly; "but wherever it is, it will be better than here, just because she's there." The sight of an orderly, coming with the morning mail, ended the discussion by scattering the squad in a hurry.
Rachel cantered on, her spirits rising continually.
It was a bright, crisp morning--a Tennessee Winter morning--when the air is as wine to the blood, and sets every pulse to leaping.
Delicate balsamic scents floated down from groves of shapely cedars.
Gratefully-astringent odors were wafted from the red oaks, ranked upon the hillsides and still covered with their leaves, now turned bright-brown, making them appear like serried phalanges of giant knights, clad in rusted scale armor.

The spicy smell of burning cedar rose on the lazily-curling smoke from a thousand camp-fires.

The red-berried holly looked as fresh and bright as rose-bushes in June, and the magnolias still wore their liveries of Spring.

The sun shone down with a tender fervor, as if wooing the sleeping buds and flowers to wake from a slumber of which he had grown weary, and start with him again through primrose paths on the pilgrimage of blossoming and fruitage.
Rachel's nostrils expanded, and she drank deeply of the exhilarating draughts of mountain air, with its delicious woodsy fragrance.