has gone
well with him."

She turned to Bidwell, who said:

"Me and him was thrown together once or twice and I met him after
Gettysburg, where neither of us got a scratch, which is more than tens
of thousands of others can say. Then I seen him in front of
Petersburg, where we had the same good luck agin, but in the fighting
round there we lost track of each other. Are you worried about him,
little gal?"

"Very much," she mournfully replied; "never once did Vose Adams come
back from Sacramento without one or two letters from him, but he has
now done so twice, and I haven't heard a word. I fear father is dead;
if he is, my heart is broken and I shall die too."

What could they say to cheer her, for Vose Adams made still another
journey westward with the same dismal emptiness of the mail bag, so
far as she was concerned. Every one did his utmost to cheer her, but
none succeeded. The ground taken was that the parent had set out on
his return, but had been hindered by some cause which would be
explained when he finally arrived. When not one of the men himself
believed the story, how could he hope to make the mourning daughter
believe it?

Felix Brush took a different stand from the others. He early settled
into the belief that Captain Dawson was dead, and that it was wrong to
encourage hope on the part of the child when the disappointment must
be more bitter in the end.

"If you are never to see him again in this world," he said, at the
close of a sultry afternoon, as the two were seated on a rocky ledge
near the cabin in which she had made her home all alone during her
parent's long absence, "what a blessed memory he leaves behind him!
Died on the field of battle, or in camp or hospital, in the service of
his country,--what more glorious epitaph can patriot desire?"

"If he is dead then I shall die; I shall pray that I may do so, so
that I shall soon see him again."

"My dear child, you must show some of the courage of your parent and
prove that you are a soldier's daughter. Your blow is a severe one,
but it has fallen upon thousands of others, and they have bravely met
it. You are young; you have seen nothing of the great world around
you--"

"I do not care to see anything of it," she interrupted with a sigh.

"You will feel different when you have recovered from the blow. It is
an amazing world, my dear. The cities and towns; the great ocean; the
works of art; the ships and steamboats; the vast structures;