g I prayed for him; but first I prayed for the
safety of my country, and the victory of our cause.

Time crept on. The battle of Bull Run was fought; he was engaged in it,
and for many, many days I never knew whether he was living or dead. In
the autumn I heard he had been ordered West, and that winter was a time
of anxious days and restless nights. I never heard _from_ him, and I did
not think it fair to write; occasionally I heard _of_ him through an
aunt of his, who lived in Maryland, but she was gall and bitterness
itself on the political question, and never let me know anything she
could possibly keep from me. So my life passed in fruitless wondering
and bitter suspense; I never saw a soldier without thinking of Edward,
and my dreams showed him to me wounded, ill, or dying. No; the dead may
make their voices heard across the gulf that parts us from them, but not
the absent, or his soul would have heard my 'exceeding loud and bitter
cry,' and hearing, must have come.

I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the
air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and
I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a
summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign,
and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest,
and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts
were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less
bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again:
hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.

In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One
night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and
the _entr'actes_ were long. In the middle of the second act, while some
horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the
theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me
moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw--with a start I
saw--the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and
older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and
smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But
to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of
apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if
he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it
be possible that