“Thank you, my dear,” he said with a gravity which showed that she had touched him.  “You shall not regret your sacrifice.”

In the course of conversation he told Mr. Royal that Archdale had been sent off at dawn upon an exploring expedition.  “I want to find out how near to us the Indians are,” he said, “they are hanging about somewhere.  You will not see him to-day.”

That morning, Elizabeth was rowed ashore with Nancy, and under an escort they went to the hospitals; not for a visit of inspection, as it turned out, but as workers.  Nancy had had experience in illness, and Elizabeth was an apt pupil.  Before the day was over the poor fellows lying there felt a change.  There were no luxuries to be had for them, but their beds were made a little softer with added moss and leaves, the relays of fresh water from the brook running through the encampment were increased.  One dying man had closed his eyes in the conviction that the last words he had sent to his mother would reach her; he had watched Elizabeth write them down, and she had promised to put a lock of his hair into the letter.  He was sure that she would do it, and he died happier for the thought.  Altogether, in many ways the comfortless tents grew less comfortless, for Elizabeth interpreted literally the general’s permission to do here what she chose.  The eyes of the soldiers followed both women with delight, and one rugged fellow, a backwoods man, whose cheerfulness not even a broken leg and a great gash in his forehead could destroy, volunteered the statement:  “By George! whether in peace or war we need our women.”  This was responded to by a cheer from the inmates of his tent.  The demonstration was all the more touching, because its endeavor to be rousing was marred in the execution by the physical weakness of the cheerers.

They spent that night on shore.  Elizabeth’s tent was next her father’s and a few rods from the general quarters.  As Mr. Royal left her, she stood a moment at the swinging door of her strange room, and looked at the stars and at the scene so new to her on which they were shining.  Then leaving it reluctantly, for it fascinated her, she laid down upon the woodland couch prepared for her, and was soon as soundly asleep as her maid near by, while around the tent patrolled the special guard set by General Pepperell.

The next day also was spent in the hospital.  In the course of the afternoon, Nancy, looking over the Bay in a vain search for the schooner which had brought them, said; “I wonder how we really shall get home, and when?”

“As General Pepperell promised us,” answered her mistress.  “And probably we shall leave to-morrow.  I expect to hear from him about it then.  So does my father; he was speaking of it this morning.”