THREE:We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now, unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
THREE:"The streets of Chin-kiang are narrow and dirty, and the most of them that we saw seemed to be paved with kitchen rubbish and other unsavory substances. The smells that rose to our nostrils were too numerous and too disagreeable to mention; Fred says he discovered fifty-four distinct and different ones, but I think there were not more than forty-seven or forty-eight. The Doctor says we have not fairly tested the city, as there are several wards to hear from in addition to the ones we visited in our ramble. I was not altogether unprepared for these unpleasant[Pg 331] features of Chin-kiang, as I had already taken a walk in the Chinese part of Shanghai.
THREE:"Suppose it wasn't either."
THREE:"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers' ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
THREE:Ccile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the union captain, where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well and he may not.""Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me." He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our headquarters tents.