and,
Each in the same old place.
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of that Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.

MARY'S NIGHT RIDE[10]

GEORGE W. CABLE

Mary Richling, the heroine of the story, was the wife of John Richling,
a resident of New Orleans. At the breaking out of the Civil War she went
to visit her parents in Milwaukee. About the time of the bombardment of
New Orleans she received news of the dangerous illness of her husband,
and she decided at once to reach his bedside, if possible. Taking with
her, her baby daughter, a child of three years, she proceeded southward,
where, after several unsuccessful attempts to secure a pass, she finally
determined to break through the lines.

About the middle of the night Mary Richling was sitting very still and
upright on a large, dark horse that stood champing his Mexican bit in
the black shadow of a great oak. Alice rested before her, fast asleep
against her bosom. Mary held by the bridle another horse, whose naked
saddle-tree was empty. A few steps in front of her the light of the full
moon shone almost straight down upon a narrow road that just there
emerged from the shadow of woods on either side, and divided into a main
right fork and a much smaller one that curved around to Mary's left. Off
in the direction of the main fork the sky was all aglow with camp-fires.
Only just here on the left there was a cool and grateful darkness.

She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next
moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took
the bridle of the old horse from her fingers and vaulted into the
saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a
"navy six." He was dressed in dull homespun, but he was the same who had
been dressed in blue. He turned his horse and led the way down the
lesser road.

"If we'd gone on three hundred yards further," he whispered, falling
back and smiling broadly, "we'd 'a' run into the pickets. I went nigh
enough to see the videttes settin' on their hosses in the main road.
This here ain't no road; it just goes up to a nigger quarters. I've got
one o' the niggers to show us the way."

"Where is he?" whispered Mary; but before her companion could answer, a
tattered