uad out for a turn at wagon
guarding.

Si looked pleased as he recognized his father's letter, but his face
flushed to the roots of his sandy hair at the sight of Annabel's. He put
the latter carefully in his pocket. It was too sweet and sacred a thing
to be opened and read under the gaze of any one else's eyes. He broke
open his father's and as his eyes traveled slowly down the large
foolscap pages, covered with the Deacon's full-grown characters, for the
Deacon made his letters as he liked his stock--big and full--he said:

"They're all well at home, but mother's had a tech of her old rheumatiz.
Pap's sold his wheat at a dollar and four bits. Peaches about half
killed. Had good luck with his lambs. Wheat's lookin' unusually well.
Beck Spangler's married Josh Wilson, whose wife died last Fall, leavin'
him two little children. Brindle cow's come in fresh, with a nice calf,
quarter Jersey. Copperhead's gittin' sassy agin. Holdin' night meetin's
and wearin' butternut badges, and talkin' about resistin' draft. Hogs
wintered well, and looks as if Pap'd have a nice drove to sell in the
Fall. Pap'll put in 'bout 90 acres o' corn, and'll have to hustle his
plowin' ez soon's the ground's fit. Little Sammy Woggles had a fight
with Beecham's boy, who's six months older, and licked him. Sammy likes
school better now than he did. Pap's bought Abraham Lincoln a new suit
o' store clothes and the girls have made him some white shirts. He goes
to church every Sunday now, and carries a cane. Pap sends his regards
to you, Shorty, and mother and the girls want to be kindly remembered.
There, take the letter, Shorty, and read it for yourself. I've got to
skip out with my squad."

Shorty took the letter with eagerness, and retired to a nook to read
it all over carefully, and see if he could not mayhap glean out of it
something more relating to Her. But the main satisfaction was in reading
again and again "Mother and the girls want to be kindly remembered to
Shorty."

"Not uncomfortably warm, and purty general, like the gal who promised
to be a sister to the hull rijimint," mused Shorty, as he refolded the
letter and replaced it in the envelope. "But, then, it is better to be
kindly remembered by sich people as them than to be slobbered over by
anybody else in the world. Wisht I knowed jest how much o' the kind
remembrance was Maria's, and if it differed in any way from her mother's
and sister's?"

The next evening the Orderly-Sergeant