disease and inaction, made "all quiet along
the Potomac." He went down to Yorktown; was in the sweat and fury of the
seven days' fight; away in the far South, where fever and pestilence
stood guard to seize those who were spared by the bullet and bayonet;
and on many a field well lost or won. Through it all marching or
fighting, sick, wounded thrice and again; praised, admired, heroic,
promoted,--from private soldier to general,--through two years and more
of such fiery experience, no part of the tender love was burned away,
tarnished, or dimmed.

Sometimes, indeed, he even smiled at himself for the constant thought,
and felt that he must certainly be demented on this one point at least,
since it colored every impression of his life, and, in some shape,
thrust itself upon him at the most unseemly and foreign times.

One evening, when the mail for the division came in, looking over the
pile of letters, his eye was caught by one addressed to James Given. The
name was familiar,--that of his father's old foreman, whom he knew to be
somewhere in the army; doubtless the same man. Unquestionably, he
thought, that was the reason he was so attracted to it; but why he
should take up the delicate little missive, scan it again and again,
hold it in his hand with the same touch with which he would have pressed
a rare flower, and lay it down as reluctantly as he would have yielded a
known and visible treasure,--that was the mystery. He had never seen
Francesca's writing, but he stood possessed, almost assured, of the
belief that this letter was penned by her hand; and at last parted with
it slowly and unwillingly, as though it were the dear hand of which he
mused; then took himself to task for this boyish weakness and folly.
Nevertheless, he went in pursuit of Jim, not to question him,--he was
too thorough a gentleman for that,--but led on partly by his desire to
see a familiar face, partly by this folly, as he called it with a sort
of amused disdain.

Folly, however, it was not, save in such measure as the subtle
telegraphings between spirit and spirit can be thus called. Unjustly so
called they are, constantly; it being the habit of most people to
denounce as heresy or ridicule as madness things too high for their
sight or too deep for their comprehension. As these people would say,
"oddly enough," or "by an extraordinary coincidence," this very letter
was from Miss Ercildoune,--a letter which she wrote as she purposed, and
as