I come now to the saddest part of the poor girl's story, gathered from her own indistinct remembrances. I mean to pass briefly over it. On the latter part of this day's travel, Ellen had passed several of the encampments which lined the road, but had escaped notice by making a detour through the woods. A mile or two east of Fairmount, however, coming near one, she went up to the first low shed; for the men had thrown up temporary huts, part wood, part mud.
"It was a woman who was there," she said, in apology; "and I was not very strong. I had eaten nothing but berries since the morning before."
The woman was a sutler. She listened to Ellen's explanations, incoherent enough probably, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, called to some of the soldiers lounging near by.
"Here's a likely tale," she said. "I half suspect this is the Rebel spy that's been hanging round these two weeks, and kept Allan dodging you. See to her, boys, while I weigh out this sugar."
The regiment was made up of the offals of a large city; the men, both brutal and idle, eager for excitement; this sutler, the only woman in camp. The evening was coming on. Ellen was alone in the half-drunken, shouting crowd.
—Not alone. He was near who was real and actual to her always. When I think of Christ as the All-Wise and All-Merciful in this our present day, I like to remember Him as going step by step with this half-crazed child in her long and solitary journey. When I hear how her danger was warded back, how every rough face turned at last towards her with a strange kindness, and tenderness, I see again the Hand that wrote upon the dust of the Temple, and clearer than in the storm or battle which I know He guides I see again the face of Him who took little children in His arms and blessed them.
When the sutler went down to the end of the field she found Big Jake, the bully of the regiment, holding the girl by the shoulder, her clothes covered with mud with which the men had pelted her. She had given one or two low cries of terror, and stood shivering weakly, her eye alone steady, holding the man at bay, as she might a brute. She held out her hands when she saw the woman. "I am no spy," she cried, shrilly.
"We'll soon test that," growled the camp-follower.
"Here, you Jake, unhand the girl! Yonder's Captain C—— looking this way. If she turns out as I say, it'll be a lucky stroke of work for you an' me."
Jake flung her back with a curse, and the woman led her to her shed. She searched Ellen. I saw the girl, when she told it, turn ashy white with terrible shame and anger. She was one of the womanliest women I ever knew.