defend my city and my home."

Hour after hour he repeated this sentence, deaf to his child's entreaties
for recognition and a farewell word. His voice grew more and more feeble
until he could only whisper the sad refrain; at last his lips moved but
there was no sound; then he was still.

For a time it seemed as if Mary would soon follow him, but her aunt, her
white face tearless and stern, bade her live for her husband and her
unborn child. These sacred motives eventually enabled her to rally, but
her heart now centred its love on her husband with an intensity which made
her friends tremble for her future. His visits had been few and brief, and
she lived upon his letters. When they were delayed, her eyes had a hunted,
agonized look which even her stoical aunt could not endure.

One day about midsummer she found the stricken wife, unconscious upon the
floor with the daily paper in her clenched hand. When at last the
physician had brought back feeble consciousness and again banished it by
the essential opiate, Mrs. Hunter read the paragraph which, like a bolt,
had struck down her niece. It was from an account of a battle in which the
Confederates had been worsted and were being driven from a certain vantage
point. "At this critical moment," ran the report, "Colonel Wallingford,
with his thinned regiment, burst through the crowd of fugitives rushing
down the road, and struck the pursuing enemy such a stinging blow as to
check its advance. If the heroic colonel and his little band could only
have been supported at this instant the position might have been regained.
As it was, they were simply overwhelmed as a slight obstacle is swept away
by a torrent. But few escaped; some were captured, while the colonel and
the majority were struck down, trampled upon and fairly obliterated as the
Northern horde of infantry and artillery swept forward all the more