A War-Time Wooing | Page 4

those glowing letters, he
reasoned rightly that love alone could prompt a man to write day after
day in all the excitements and vicissitudes of stirring campaign. As for
the rest--was he not an Abbot? Did not Guthrie know and honor him?
Was he not a gallant officer as well as a thoroughbred gentleman? No
time for wooing now! That would come with peace. He had even given
his consent when she blushingly asked him if she might--"Well, there!
read it yourself," she said, putting the closely written page into his
hands. It was an eager plea for her picture--and the photograph was sent.
He chose the one himself, a dainty "vignette" on card, for it reminded
him of the mother who was gone. It was fitting, he told himself, that his
daughter--her sainted mother's image, Guthrie's sister--should love a
gallant soldier. He gloried in the accounts of Paul Abbot's bravery, and

longed to meet him and take him by the hand. The time would come.
He could wait and watch over the little girl who was drawing them
together. He asked no questions. It would all be right.
And now they stood together at the station waiting for the evening cars
and the latest news from the front. It lacked but a few minutes of train
time when, with sad and sympathetic face, the station-agent approached,
a fateful brown envelope in his hand. The doctor turned quickly at his
daughter's gasping exclamation,
"Papa! Mr. Hardy has a telegram!"
Despite every effort his hand and lip trembled violently as he took it
and tore it open. It was brief enough--an answer to his repeated
despatches to the War Department.
"Lieutenant Paul R. Abbot, dangerously wounded, is at field hospital
near Frederick, Maryland."
The doctor turned to her pale, pleading face, tears welling in his eyes.
"Be brave, my little girl," he murmured, brokenly. "He is wounded, but
we can go to him at once."
Nearly sunset again, and the South Mountain is throwing its dark
shadow clear across the Monocacy. The day has been warm, cloudless,
beautiful, and, now that evening is approaching, the sentries begin to
saunter out from the deeper shade that has lured them during the
afternoon and to give a more soldierly tone to the picture. There are not
many of them, to be sure, and this is evidently the encampment of no
large command of troops, despite the number of big white tents pitched
in the orchard, and the score of white-topped army-wagons, the
half-dozen yellow ambulances, and the scraggy lot of mules in the
pasture-lot across the dusty highway. The stream is close at hand, only
a stone's-throw from the picturesque old farmhouse, and the animated
talk among the groups of bathers has that peculiarly blasphemous
flavor which seems inseparable from the average teamster. That the
camp is under military tutelage is apparent from the fact that a tall

young man in the loose, ill-fitting blue fatigue-dress of our volunteers,
with war-worn belts and a business-like look to the long "Springfield"
over his shoulder, comes striding down to the bank and shouts
forthwith,
"You fellows are making too much noise there, and the doctor wants
you to dry up."
"Tell him to send us some towels, then," growls one of the number, a
black-browed, surly-looking fellow with ponderous, bent shoulders and
a slouching mien. Some of his companions titter encouragingly, others
are silent. The sergeant of the guard flushes angrily and turns on the
speaker.
"You know very well what I mean, Rix. I'm using your own slang in
speaking to you because you wouldn't comprehend decent language. It
isn't the first time you've been warned not to make such a row here
close to a lot of wounded and dying men. Now I mean business. Quit it
or you'll get into trouble."
"What authority have you got, I'd like to know," is the sneering
rejoinder. "You're nothing but a hospital guard, and have no business
interfering with us. I ain't under no doctor's orders. You go back to your
stiffs and leave live men alone."
The sergeant is about to speak, when the bathers, glancing up at the
bank, see him suddenly face to his left and raise his hand to his
shouldered rifle in salute. The next instant a tall young officer, leaning
heavily on a cane and with his sword-arm in a sling, appears at the
sergeant's side.
"Who is the man who questions your authority?" he asks, in a voice
singularly calm and deliberate.
There is a moment's awkward silence. The sergeant has the reluctance
of his class to getting a fellow-soldier into a scrape. The half-dressed
bathers stand uncomfortably about the shore and look blankly from one
to another. The man addressed as Rix is busily occupied in pulling on a

pair