cut and stab across and through
them as if they were not there,--yes, through them, for few are the
balls and bayonets that reach their marks without traversing some of
these devoted breasts. Spectral, alas, is their guardianship, but real
are their wounds and deadly as any the combatants receive.

Soon after breakfast on the day of the battle Grace came across to
the parsonage, her swollen eyes and pallid face telling of a sleepless
night. She could not bear her mother's company that day, for she knew
that she had never greatly liked Philip. Miss Morton was very tender and
sympathetic. Grace was a little comforted by Mr. Morton's saying that
commonly great battles did not open much before noon. It was a respite
to be able to think that probably up to that moment at least no harm
had come to Philip. In the early afternoon the minister drove into
Waterville to get the earliest bulletins at the "Banner" office, leaving
the two women alone.

The latter part of the afternoon a neighbor who had been in Waterville
drove by the house, and Miss Morton called to him to know if there were
any news yet. He drew a piece of paper from his pocket, on which he had
scribbled the latest bulletin before the "Banner" office, and read as
follows: "The battle opened with a vigorous attack by our right. The
enemy was forced back, stubbornly contesting every inch of ground.
General ------'s division is now bearing the brunt of the fight and is
suffering heavily. The result is yet uncertain."

The division mentioned was the one in which Philip's regiment was
included. "Is suffering heavily,"--those were the words. There was
something fearful in the way the present tense brought home to Grace a
sense of the battle as then actually in progress. It meant that while
she sat there on the shady piazza with the drowsy hum of the bees in her
ears, looking out on the quiet lawn where the house cat, stretched
on the grass, kept a sleepy eye on the birds as they flitted in the
branches of the apple-trees, Philip might be facing a storm of lead
and iron, or, maybe, blent in some desperate hand-to-hand struggle, was
defending his life--her life--against murderous cut and thrust.

To begin to pray for his safety was not to dare to cease, for to cease
would be to withdraw a sort of protection--all, alas I she could give
--and abandon him to his enemies. If she had been watching over him
from above the battle, an actual witness of the carnage going on tha