Ailsa rose and stood by the open window, looking out across the hills; but her thoughts were centred on Colonel Arran’s tragedy, and the tragedy of those two hot-headed children whom his punishment had out-lawed.

Doubtless his girl wife had told him how the boy had come to be there, and that she had banished him; but the clash between maturity and adolescence is always inevitable; the misunderstanding between ripe experience and Northern logic, and emotional inexperience and Southern impulse was certain to end in disaster.

Ailsa considered; and she knew that now her brief for Colonel Arran was finished, for beyond the abstract right she had no sympathy with the punishment he had dealt out, even though his conscience and civilisation and the law of the land demanded the punishment of these erring’ ones.

No, the punishment seemed too deeply tainted with vengeance for her to tolerate.

A deep unhappy sigh escaped her.  She turned mechanically, seated herself, and resumed her sewing.

“I suppose I ought to be asleep,” she said.  “I am on duty to-night, and they’ve brought in so many patients from the new regiments.”

Celia bent and bit off her thread, then passing the needle into the hem, laid her work aside.

“Honey-bud,” she said, “you are ve’y tired.  If you’ll undress I’ll give you a hot bath and rub you and brush your hair.”

“Oh, Celia, will you?  I’d feel so much better.”  She gave a dainty little shudder and made a wry face, adding: 

“I’ve had so many dirty, sick men to cleanse—­oh, incredibly dirty and horrid!—­poor boys—­it doesn’t seem to be their fault, either; and they are so ashamed and so utterly miserable when I am obliged to know about the horror of their condition. . . .  Dear, it will be angelic of you to give me a good, hot scrubbing.  I could go to sleep if you would.”

“Of co’se I will,” said Celia simply.  And, when Ailsa was ready to call her in she lifted the jugs of water which a negro had brought—­one cold, one boiling hot—­entered Ailsa’s room, filled the fiat tin tub; and, when Ailsa stepped into it, proceeded to scrub her as though she had been two instead of twenty odd.

Then, her glowing body enveloped in a fresh, cool sheet, she lay back and closed her eyes while Celia brushed the dull gold masses of her hair.

“Honey-bee, they say that all the soldiers are in love with you, even my po’ Confederate boys in Ward C. Don’t you dare corrupt their loyalty!”

“They are the dearest things—­all of them,” smiled Ailsa sleepily, soothed by the skilful brushing.  “I have never had one cross word, one impatient look from Union or Confederate.”  She added:  “They say in Washington that we women are not needed—­that we are in the way—­that the sick don’t want us. . . .  Some very important personage from Washington came down to the General Hospital and announced that the Government was going to get rid of all women nurses.  And such a dreadful row those poor sick soldiers made!  Dr. West told us; he was there at the time.  And it seems that the personage went back to Washington with a very different story to tell the powers that be.  So I suppose they’ve concluded to let us alone.”