alks by his
side. Her proud eyes challenge all who come, saying, "See, this is my
hero. I am the one he loves."

You could easily tell when it was a wife and not a sweetheart whom the
soldier had with him. There was no challenge in the eyes of the wife.
Young romance shed none of its glamour on the sacrifice she was making
for her native land. It was only because they could not bear to sit any
longer looking at each other in the house that she and her husband had
come out to walk.

In the residence parts of the town family groups were gathered on shady
piazzas, a blue-coated figure the centre of each. They were trying to
talk cheerfully, making an effort even to laugh a little.

Now and then one of the women stole unobserved from the circle, but her
bravely smiling face as she presently returned gave no inkling of the
flood of tears that had eased her heart in some place apart. The young
soldier himself was looking a little pale and nervous with all his
affected good spirits, and it was safe to guess that he was even then
thinking how often this scene would come before him afterwards, by the
camp-fire and on the eve of battle.

In the village of Upton, some four or five miles out of Waterville, on a
broad piazza at the side of a house on the main street, a group of four
persons were seated around a tea-table.

The centre of interest of this group, as of so many others that day,
was a soldier. He looked not over twenty-five, with dark blue eyes, dark
hair cut close to his head, and a mustache trimmed crisply in military
fashion. His uniform set off to advantage an athletic figure of youthful
slender-ness, and his bronzed complexion told of long days of practice
on the drill-ground in the school of the company and the battalion. He
wore the shoulder-straps of a second lieutenant.

On one side of the soldier sat the Rev. Mr. Morton, his cousin, and on
the other Miss Bertha Morton, a kindly faced, middle-aged lady, who was
her brother's housekeeper and the hostess of this occasion.

The fourth member of the party was a girl of nineteen or twenty. She was
a very pretty girl, and although to-day her pallid cheeks and red and
swollen eyelids would to other eyes have detracted somewhat from her
charms, it was certain that they did not make her seem less adorable
to the young officer, for he was her lover, and was to march with the
regiment in the morning.

Lieutenant Philip King was a lawyer, and by perseverance and na