Hammer strokes rang from half-cleared hillsides, where some regiment, newly encamped, was busily flooring its tents; the blows of axes sounded from the oak woods; and Ailsa could see great trees bending, slowly slanting, then falling with a rippling crash of smashed branches.
The noises in the forest awoke Letty.

Whimpering sleepily, but warm under the shawls which Ailsa had piled around her, she sat up rubbing her dark eyes; then, with a little quick-drawn breath of content, took Ailsa's hand.
The driver said: "It's them gallus lumbermen from some o' the Maine regiments clearing the ground.

They're some with the axe.
Yonder's the new fort the Forty Thieves is building." "The--what ?" asked Ailsa, perplexed.
"Fortieth New York Infantry, ma'am.

The army calls 'em the Forty Thieves, they're that bright at foraging, flag or no flag! Chickens, pigs, sheep--God knows they're a light-fingered lot; but their colonel is one of the best officers in the land.

Why shouldn't they be a good fat regiment, with their haversacks full o' the best, when half the army feeds on tack and sow-belly, and the other half can't git that!" The driver, evidently nearing his destination, became confidentially loquacious.
"Yonder's Fort Elsworth, ladies! It's hid by the forest, but it's there, you bet! If you ladies could climb up one o' them big pines, you'd see the line of forts and trenches in a half-moon from the Chain Bridge at Georgetown to Alexandria, and you'd see the seminary in its pretty park, and, belike, Gineral McClellan in the chapel cupola, a-spying through his spy-glass what deviltry them rebel batteries is hatching on the hill over yonder." "Are the rebels _there_ ?" "Yes'm.