f you is to get
me a chance to work nursing just as close to the front as I can go,
and then do all you can to help me find out where Heber is, and then
let me have as many as you can of these heathen prisoners the men
bring in here to take care of, so I can ask them if they have seen
Heber. My boy isn't a coward, and if he has got scared and run away,
he's got to come back and face the music. Thank goodness none of the
folks at home know anything about it, and they won't if I can help it."

The woman folded the letter, and putting it back into its envelope sat
waiting. It was evident that she did not conceive of the possibility
even of her request not being granted.

The officer hesitated.

"You will have to see the General, Mrs. Smith," he said at last,
glad that it need not be his duty to tell her how hopeless her
errand was. "I will arrange for you to see him. I will take you to
him myself. I wish I could do more to help you."

"How soon can I see him?"

"Tomorrow, I think. I will find out and let you know."

"Thank you," said the woman, as she rose to go. "I don't want to lose
any time. I want to get right to work."

The next day the young soldier's mother saw the General and told
her story to him. In the mean time, apprised by the Colonel of the
regiment of the woman's errand, the General had had a report of
the case brought to him. Heber Smith had been sent out with a small
scouting party. They had been ambushed, and instead of trying to fight,
he had left the men and had run back to cover.

"But that don't necessarily make him a coward," the young man's mother
pleaded with the General. "A coward is a man who plans to run away. He
lost his head that time. Wasn't that the first time he had been put
in such a place?"

The officer admitted that it was.

"Well, then he can live it down. He has got to, for the sake of his
father's reputation as well as his own. His father was a soldier,
too," she said proudly. "He was in the Union army four years, and had
a medal given to him for bravery, and every spring since he died the
members of his Grand Army Post have decorated his grave. When Heber
comes to think of that, I know he will come back."

The General was not an old man;--that is he was not so old but that,
back in her prairie home in a western state, there was a mother to
whom he wrote letters, a mother whom he knew to value above his life
itself his reputation. The thought of her came to him now.

"