The Red Acorn | Page 4

92
Chapter X
.--The Mountaineer's Revenge, - - - - - - - - - - - 112
Chapter XI
.--Through the Mountain and the Night, - - - - - - 126
Chapter XII
.--Aunt Debby Brill, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 141
Chapter XIII
.--An Apple Jack Raid, - - - - - - - - - - - - - 160
Chapter XIV
.--In the Hospital, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 175
Chapter XV
.--Making Acquaintance with Duty, - - - - - - - - - 184
Chapter XVI
.--The Ambuscade, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 204
Chapter XVII
.--Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain, - - - - - - - - - - 230
Chapter XVIII
.--Secret Service, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 252
Chapter XIX
.--The Battle of Stone River, - - - - - - - - - - 279

Chapter I
. A Declaration.

O, what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the Earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays." --Lowell.
Of all human teachers they were the grandest who gave us the New Testament, and made it a textbook for Man in every age. Transcendent benefactors of the race, they opened in it a never-failing well-spring of the sweet waters of Consolation and Hope, which have flowed over, fertilized, and made blossom as a rose the twenty-century wide desert of the ills of human existence.
But they were not poets, as most of the authors of the Old Testament were.
They were too much in earnest in their great work of carrying the glad evangel of Redemption to all the earth--they so burned with eagerness to pour their joyful tidings into every ear, that they recked little of the FORM in which the saving intelligence was conveyed.
Had they been poets would they have conceived Heaven as a place with foundations of jasper, sapphires and emeralds, gates of pearl, and streets of burnished gold that shone like glass? Never.
That showed them to be practical men, of a Semitic cast of mind, who addressed hearers that agreed with them in regarding gold and precious stones as the finest things of which the heart could dream.
Had they been such lovers of God's handiwork in Nature as the Greek religious teachers--who were also poets--they would have painted us a Heaven vaulted by the breath of opening flowers, and made musical by the sweet songs of birds in the first rapture of finding their young mates.
In other words they would have given us a picture of earth on a perfect June day.
On the afternoon of such a day as this Rachel Bond sat beneath an apple-tree at the crest of a moderate hill, and looked dreamily away to where, beyond the village of Sardis at the foot of the hill, the Miami River marked the beautiful valley like a silver ribbon carelessly flung upon a web of green velvet. Rather she seemed to be looking there, for the light that usually shown outward in those luminous eyes was turned inward. The little volume of poems had dropped unheeded from the white hand. It had done its office: the passion of its lines had keyed her thoughts to a harmony that suffused her whole being, until all seemed as naturally a part of the glorious day as the fleecy clouds in the sapphire sky, the cheerful hum of the bees, and the apple-blossoms' luxurious scent.
Her love--and, quite as much, her girlish ambition--had been crowned with violets and bays some weeks before, when the fever-heat of patriotism seemed to bring another passion in Harry Glen's bosom to the eruptive point, and there came the long-waited-for avowal of his love, which was made on the evening before his company departed to respond to the call for troops which followed the fall of Fort Sumter.
Does it seem harsh to say that she had sought to bring about this DENOUEMENT? Rather, it seems that her efforts were commendable. She was a young woman of marriageable age. She believed her her mission in life was marriage to some man who would make her a good husband, and whom she would in turn love, honor, and strive to make happy. Harry Glen's family was the equal of her's in social station, and a little above it in wealth. to this he added educational and personal advantages that made him the most desirable match in Sardis. Starting with the premises given above, her first conclusion was the natural one that she should marry the best man available, and the next that that man was Harry Glen.
Her efforts had been bounded