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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
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