dedicated the golden product to the soldiers. She had two churnings,
and the result was five pounds of delicious butter. Her pleasant work
was done in the open air, before the side-door of the cottage, in sight
of the beautiful lake. On the day of her second churning, her thoughts
were peculiarly sweet and cheerful. She sung as gayly as the robin,
nestling in the vine-leaves over the cottage window. Her soul was as
serene as the sky, her heart as tranquil as the lake, sleeping in the
still sunshine.

As Bertha worked with all the strength of her vigorous little arms, and
with a gay good-will, little jets of cream now and then spirted up
around the dasher, sometimes sprinkling her round, rosy face, and once
or twice reaching her smiling lips to dissolve in sweetness there; and
she said to herself, "How many sweet and beautiful things have gone to
make up this golden cream!--the tender bloom of the early summer clover
and daisies, and dew and sunshine, and by and by, when it hardens into
more golden butter, and goes to the 'Sanitary,' won't more beautiful
things still be added to it?--pity, and love, and patriotism, and the
blessing of God?" Then her thoughts wandered, and her face clouded,
and she murmured, "O our poor sick and wounded soldiers! O the poor
prisoners! O my poor, dear Heinrich!"

Just then she heard her mother call her in an eager, trembling voice.
She ran into the cottage to see, seated in the neat kitchen, a young
soldier, in a faded and tattered uniform,--a pale, emaciated figure,
childlike in weakness, but old in suffering.

Bertha knew him rather by heart than by sight, and, falling on his
neck, cried, "Dear, dear Heinrich! I have always said the Lord would
bring you back, and He has, has n't he?"

"Yes, little wife, all that the Rebels have left of me."

The drummer-boy's story was sad and strange but such stories are
painfully common now-a-days. He had escaped from the stockade with a
party of friends; they had been chased by bloodhounds and all retaken.
Heinrich escaped again, alone; he was befriended, fed, guided by loyal
negroes; he made his way, on foot, through the mountains of Tennessee,
and, after countless hardships and adventures, reached the glorious
Northwest, and his home. He was ill with a disease brought on by
starvation and exposure, and though he had no battle-wounds to show,
there were, on his neck and arms, the terrible marks of the
bloodhound's teeth,--surely hono