eld communication still; that I
rejoiced when he was glad; and wept when I said, 'He is sorrowful
to-day.' He had gone away gay and hopeful, and had left me
weeping--oppressed by vague fears and chill forebodings, my heart could
not echo _now_ the happy mood of his. Wild and weird, all that dreary
day, the wind moaned its warning; and the sad echo sounded through other
dreary days that followed this; and dreary nights came also, when I
prayed and wept, and covered the pictured face with tears and
kisses--when I cried, 'God keep my precious one, and bring my darling
back to me;' and that was all my prayer;--when I sank to fitful
slumbers, and wildly dreamed of shell and cannon ball, and bullets thick
as hail, of foes met in deadly fray, of shielding my darling's form with
mine--there, where all was smoke and darkness and blood and horror--and
dying gladly in his stead. Or the scene changed from horror to
desolation, and, with a dreadful sense of isolation on me, alone in the
darkness I wandered up and down, blindly searching for him I never
found; or finding him, perhaps, covered with ghastly wounds, and dead,
quite dead; and then starting broad awake with horror at the sight.

God help us! us women, with our wild, inordinate affections, when Death
waits in ambush for our darlings, whom we are powerless to save from the
smallest of life's ills and perils! A letter came at last, eight dear
pages, with all the margins filled. Long, confidential, loving, with
just a thought of sadness in it; a slight, almost imperceptible shadow
resting on the glowing hopes with which he left; yet bright withal,
bright like himself. The charm of novelty was potent yet. How I read it
o'er and o'er, this first dear message from him; how I kissed the
senseless thing; how my tears fell upon it; how day and night I wore it
on my heart, until another took its place!

They came at stated intervals _now_, and as the time wore on, and their
tone changed, little by little, I knew that the hard life he led began
to tell upon him--that, petted, fondled, cherished as he had been,
unfitted for hardship of any kind, they grew at times almost too great
for calm endurance. He never complained, my grand, brave boy; he spoke
of them lightly always, sometimes jestingly, but he could not deceive
that fine interior sense. I knew there were times when he turned
heartsick from the wild life that claimed him; I could see how his noble
nature shrank from all that w