A War-Time Wooing | Page 3

breast as they raised him gently from the silken folds. The Virginians
knew a brave man when they saw one, and they carried him tenderly
into their lines and wrote his last messages, and that night they sent the
honored body back to his brigade, and so the stricken father found and
brought home all that was left of the gallant boy in whom his hopes
were centred.
For a time Bessie's letters languished after this, though she had written
nearly every week during the winter and early spring. Lieutenant Abbot,
on the other hand, appeared to redouble his deep interest. His letters
were full of sympathy--of a tenderness that seemed to be with difficulty
repressed. She read these to her mourning father--they were so full of
sorrow for the bitter loss that had befallen them, so rich with soldierly
sentiment and with appreciation of Guthrie's heroic character and death,

so welcome with reminiscence of him. Not that he and Abbot had met
on the Peninsula--it was the unhappy lot of the Massachusetts--th to be
held with McDowell's corps in front of Washington while their
comrades were doing sharp, soldierly work down along the
Chickahominy. But even where they were, said these letters, men
talked by the hour of how Guthrie Warren had died at Seven
Pines--how daring Phil Kearney himself had ridden up and held forth--
"The one hand still left,"
and asked him his name just before the final advance on the thicket.
One letter contained a copy of some soldierly verses her Massachusetts
correspondent had written--"Warren's Death at Seven Pines"--in which
he placed him peer with Warren who fell at Bunker Hill. The verses
thrilled through her heart and soul and brought a storm of tears--tears of
mingled pride and love and hopeless sorrow from her aging father's
eyes. No wonder she soon began to write more frequently. These letters
from Virginia were the greatest joy her father had, she told herself, and
though she wrote through a mist that blurred the page, she soon grew
conscious of a strange, shy sense of comfort, of a thrilling little spring
of glad emotion, of tender, shrinking, sensitive delight, and by the time
the hot summer was waning and August was at hand this unseen soldier,
who had only shared her thoughts before, took complete and utter
control. Why tell the old, old story in its every stage? It was with a new,
wild fear at heart she heard of Stonewall Jackson's leap for the Rapidan,
of the grapple at Cedar Mountain where the Massachusetts men fought
sternly and met with cruel loss. Her father raged with anxiety when the
news came of the withdrawal from the Peninsula, the triumphant rush
of Lee and Longstreet on Jackson's trail, of the ill-starred but heroic
struggle made by Pope along the banks of Bull Run. A few days and
nights of dread suspense and then came tidings that Lee was across the
Potomac and McClellan marching to meet him. Two more letters
reached her from the marching--th Massachusetts, and a telegram from
Washington telling her where to write, and saying, "All well so far as I
am concerned," at which the doctor shook his head--it sounded so
selfish at such a time; it grated on his patriotic ear, and it wasn't such as
he thought an Abbot ought to telegraph. But then he was hurried; they

probably only let him fall out of ranks a moment as they marched
through Washington. And then the newspapers began to teem with
details of the fierce battles of the last three days of August, and he
forgave him and fathomed the secret in his daughter's breast as she
stood breathing very quickly, her cheek flushing, her eyes filling, and
listening while he read how Lieutenant Abbot had led the charge of
the--th Massachusetts and seized the battle-flag of one of Starke's
brigades at that bristling parapet--the old, unfinished railway grade to
the north of Groveton. Neither father nor daughter uttered a word upon
the subject. The old man simply opened his arms and took her to his
heart, where, overcome with emotion, mingling pride and grief and
anxiety and tender, budding love, she burst into tears and hid her
burning face.
[Illustration: "The Virginians knew a brave man when they saw one."]
Then came the news of fierce fighting at South Mountain, where the--th
Massachusetts was prominent; then of the Antietam, where twice it
charged through that fearful stretch of cornfield and had but a handful
left to guard the riddled colors when nightfall came, and then--silence
and suspense. No letters, no news--nothing.
Her white, wan face and pleading eyes were too much for the father to
see. Though no formal offer of marriage had been made, though the
word "love" had hardly been written in