A War-Time Wooing | Page 4

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 of soldier brogans, and tying, with great deliberation, the leather strings.
Casting his clear eyes over the group, as he steps forward to the edge, the young officer speaks again:
"You're here, are you, Rix. That leaves little doubt as to the man even if I were not sure of the voice. I could