Early in the morning Ellen dressed herself neatly, "to please Joe," and started out to the camp, carrying her basket, asking her way as she went. The girl had wrought herself up now to such a certainty of seeing him that a disappointment was sure to be a new and different shock from any that had gone before. I suppose, too, the novel sight of the tents, the crowds of armed men, excited her feeble mind beyond its powers. She came to the gate and asked the sentry to tell Joseph Carrol of the Twenty-Fourth Ohio that his sister had come.
"It would need a long call to do that, my girl," said the man. "The Twenty-Fourth went off to active service yesterday."
"To where?"
"Virginia."
About a mile from the camp live two childless old people who then were keepers of the toll-gate on the road into town. I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten their name, it being a common one; but I remember what their lives were, and I am sure that they who carry the record of every man's hours to add to the Great Reckoning must find in their hackneyed name a meaning even to them of great truth and a rare charity. The old lady told me afterwards of her finding Ellen sitting on the roadside near her well, her mind quite gone, yet very gentle and grave even in her madness. They took her home to the toll-gate house, and kept her for two or three days, in which they learned her story.
"My husband," she said, "telegraphed to the Colonel of the regiment and found it was delayed at Bellaire; but as Ellen's health was in so critical a state, they thought it best to say nothing about her to her brother, and I was resolved that she should not go on. We offered (what we had never done before to any one) to adopt her, and treat her as our own child. People coming in and seeing the awkward country-body would wonder why we set such a sudden store by her, but in a little while they'd see as we did. I think her pure soul showed right through her homely face. Then she trusted people as free as a child; so everybody was kind to her. But I used to think there was but two people real to her in the world,—the 'Lord Jesus,' and 'Joe.'"
When Ellen was herself again, however, she insisted upon going on, and fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of letters from the Governor of Ohio and her new friends, in the hope of obtaining a furlough for Carrol. With a prudent after-thought, too, the gate-keeper's wife wrote Ellen's name and her own address upon a card which she fastened to the faithful little basket, in case of any accident; and then, with many anxious looks and blessings, Ellen again started on her journey.
At Zanesville, her companion, finding some unexpected business which would detain him in that place, left her to pursue her journey alone. It is but a few hours' ride from Columbus to Bellaire (the terminus of the Central Ohio Railroad); but at Lewis's Mills this day a collision or some other accident occurred, by which the train was delayed until late that night: no other harm was done, except to give time for poor Ellen's chance again to fail her. Joe's regiment crossed the Ohio that night and went into Virginia.
Bellaire and Benwood, the opposite point on the other side of the river, are small railroad stations, which one or two iron-mills have rendered foul with ashes and smoke. The crossing of the river at that time was by a ferry, rendered purposely tedious by the managers of the Baltimore and Ohio Road, to force their passengers to the lower junction at Parkersburg. I mention this to account for the detention which ensued. When the train stopped at Bellaire, Ellen followed the crowd off the platform into a tavern consisting of a barn-like eating-room and a few starved little garret rooms over it. She stopped at the door uncertainly, while the passengers crowded about the eating-stands at the far end of the room. A fat, oily landlord came up with a hat driven down over his brows.
"Cross the river to-night, Ma'am? Slow work! slow work! Not get this train over till morning. Better take a bite."