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Updated: June 16, 2025
The abbess led her companion into a long room, clean, warm, light and airy, with about thirty narrow little cots, arranged in two rows against the walls, fifteen on each side, with a long passage between them. About half a dozen of these cots were empty. On the others lay about twenty-four of the most pitiable of all our Lord's poor young infants abandoned by their unnatural parents.
It was some fifty miles thence to Whiteness, which lay close underneath the mountains, and was, as it were, the door of the passes whereby men rode to Goldburg. The land which they passed through was fair, both of tillage and pasture, with much cattle therein. Everywhere they saw men and women working afield, but no houses of worthy yeomen or vavassors, or cots of good husbandmen.
Very bright, very airy, is this vast room, running the whole length of one side of the house, with numerous windows and cots, separated one from another by a little distance, hung with fleecy white curtains like clouds. Women go and come through the large arch in the centre, with piles of linen on their arms, or keys in their hands, nurses with the special duty of washing the babies.
Now and then a structure of logs added an appearance of solidity to the whole. The girl did not look too closely. She knew that they passed places in which there were long rows of cots, and that others were devoted to trade. She noticed signs which advertised soft drinks and cigars always "soft drinks," which sometimes came into camp marked as "dynamite," "salt pork," and "flour."
An attempt was made to isolate the first case in the hospital, but the cots in that spacious apartment filled beyond the limits of accommodation; and soon, a large proportion of the cells on the ground floor held each its victim of the fatal disease, that as the scythe of death cut a wide swath through convict ranks.
Again, we recalled that awful night in November when we moved with hurried yet silent tread among the cots on which lay figures in many uneasy attitudes, some brokenly slumbering and muttering through helpless delirium; others uttering suppressed moans as they lay tossing upon their cots.
"He looked plumb scared, and I reckon he ducked into cover somewhere. Maybe he headed for Dugout City and hasn't stopped running yet." Then a turn of the path under the trees brought them in sight of their camp. Rather, where the camp had been. Jim Ferrers rubbed his eyes for an instant, for the tents had been spirited away as though by magic. Nor were the cots to be seen.
Presently a hospital servant came and took Berkley away to another building. The wards were where the schoolrooms had been. Blackboards still decorated the wall; a half-erased exercise in Latin remained plainly visible over the rows of cots. Ailsa and the apothecary stood together in low-voiced conversation by a window.
The situation was rather novel tell to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted and said: "Regiment all come back, Sir." Then, to propitiate the Colonel: "An' none of the horses any the worse, Sir." The Colonel only snorted and answered: "You'd better tuck the men into their cots, then, and see that they don't wake up and cry in the night." The Sergeant withdrew.
It seemed but an instant until the village was aroused. Candles flashed in the windows, and lanthorns gleamed in the streets as the people prepared for the foe. Every man and boy capable of bearing a musket hurried to the fort, while white-faced women snatched their little ones from their cots, and huddled together for mutual comfort and consolation.
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