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So among a hundred other letters, as October opens, Horace writes this:–

TALBOT COURT HOUSE, VA.,

Oct. 3, 1863.

DEAR HULDAH,–Here we are still, as I have been explaining to father; and, as you will see by my letter to him, here we are like to stay. Thus far we are doing sufficiently well. As I have told him, if my plans had been adopted we should have been pushed rapidly forward up the valley of the Yellow Creek; Badger’s corps would have been withdrawn from before Winchester; Wilcox and Steele together would have threatened Early; and then, by a rapid flank movement, we should have pounced down on Longstreet (not the great Longstreet, but little Longstreet), and compelled him to uncover Lynchburg; we could have blown up the dams and locks on the canal, made a freshet to sweep all the obstructions out of James River, and then, if they had shown half as much spirit on the Potomac, all of us would be in Richmond for our Christmas dinner. But my plans, as usual, were not asked for, far less taken. So, as I said, here we are.

Well, I have been talking with Lawrence Worster, my Surgeon-in-Charge, who is a very good fellow. His sick-list is not bad now, and he does not mean to have it bad; but he says that he is not pleased with the ways of his ward-masters; and it was his suggestion, not mine, mark you, that I should see if one or two of the Sanitary women would not come as far as this to make things decent. So, of course, I write to you. Don’t you think mother could spare you to spend the winter here? It will be rough, of course; but it is all in the good cause. Perhaps you know some nice women,–well, not like you, of course; but still, disinterested and sensible, who would come too. Think of this carefully, I beg you, and talk to father and mother. Worster says we may have three hundred boys in hospital before Christmas. If Jubal Early should come this way, I don’t know how many more. Talk with mother and father.

Always yours,
HORACE BARTLETT.

P. S. I have shown Worster what I have written; he encloses a sort of official letter which may be of use. He says, “Show this to Dr. Hayward; get them to examine you and the others, and then the government, on his order, will pass you on.” I enclose this, because, if you come, it will save time.

Of course Huldah went. Grace Starr, her married sister, went with her, and Mrs. Philbrick, and Anna Thwart. That was the way they happened to be all together in the Methodist Church that had been, of Talbot Court House, as Christmas holidays drew near, of the year of grace, 1863.

She and her friends had been there quite long enough to be wonted to the strangeness of December in the open air. On her little table in front of the desk of the church were three or four buttercups in bloom, which she had gathered in an afternoon walk, with three or four heads of hawksweed. “The beginning of one year,” Huldah said, “with the end of the other.” Nay, there was even a stray rose which Dr. Sprigg had found in a farmer’s garden. Huldah came out from the vestry, where her own bed was, in the gray of the morning, changed the water for the poor little flowers, sat a moment at the table to look at last night’s memoranda, and then beckoned to the ward-master, and asked him, in a whisper, what was the movement she had heard in the night,–“Another alarm from Early?”

“No, Miss; not an alarm. I saw the Colonel’s orderly as he passed. He stopped here for Dr. Fenno’s case. There had come down an express from General Mitchell, and the men were called without the bugle, each man separately; not a horse was to neigh, if they could help it. And really, Miss, they were off in twenty minutes.”