a despairing manner:

"O, where is my husband? Where is he? Is he dead?

"My son, my son!" cried the old lady.

"Bring me my papa, you bad man!" said the little child, and I was
surrounded by the three.

Gentle reader, I have been through many scenes in my life, and have been
many times where it was not the toss of a copper whether death or life
was my portion, and I had some nerve to help me through, but I never
was in a place that tried me like that one. I had been captured by the
father of this little child, the husband of this beautiful, proud woman,
the son of this charming old lady. I had seen him brought in, dead, had
seen him buried, and had thrown a bunch of roses in his grave. Now I was
surrounded by these mourners, mourners when they should know the worst.
Cold chills run all over me, and cold perspiration was on my brow.

"Is he dead?" they all shouted together.

I hate a liar, on general principles, and yet there are times when a lie
is so much easier to tell than truth. I did not want to be a murderer,
and I knew, by the dreadful light in the eyes of that lovely wife, as
she looked up at me from the neck of the horse, her face as white as
snow, that if I told the truth she would fall dead right where she was.
If I told the truth that blessed old lady's heart would be broken, and
that little child's face would not have any more smiles, during the war,
for mamma and grandma, and, with a hoarse voice, and choking, and trying
to swallow something that seemed as big as a baseball in my throat, I
deliberately lied to them. I told them the young man who rode this horse
had been captured, after a gallant fight, unharmed, and sent north.
That he was so brave that our boys fell in love with him, and there was
nothing too good for him in our army, and that he would be well taken
care of, and exchanged soon, I had no doubt, and bade them not to worry,
but to look at the discomforts and annoyances of war as leniently as
possible, and all would be well soon.

"Thank heaven! Take all we have got in welcome," said the old lady, as a
heavenly smile came over her face. "My boy is safe."

"O, thank you, sir," said the little mother, as a lovely smile chased a
dimple all around her mouth, and corraled it in her left cheek, while a
pair of navy-blue eyes looked up at me as though she would hug me if
I was not a Yankee, eyes that I have seen a thousand times since, in
dreams, often with tears in them.

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