he stood there
under the trees, with the bitter recollections of the past overwhelming
every other thought and feeling of the present.

Because it seemed to him that he could not sleep under old Elkins's roof
that night, he remained there and slept there,--in the room where his
fever ran its course,--in the room where Nancy died.

Because this story of the last months of her life was as gall and
wormwood to him, he refused it not, but went over it with his wife's
relations, and helped them spread a decent pall, according to the custom
of mourners; over what had been.

Was he endeavoring to deceive himself and others into the belief that he
was a mourning man? He was but accepting the varied humiliations of
death; for they do not all pertain to the surrendering life. He was not
thinking at all of his loss through her, nor of his gain by her. He was
thinking, as he stood above the grave of fifteen years, how high
Disgrace and Misery had heaped the mound. So bitterly he was thinking of
the past, it was without desire that he at last arose and faced the
future.

* * * * *

When he went to Charlestown--for a man on furlough had no time to
lose--and saw his Janet in the Colonel's house,--Miss Ames took Janet
home with her after that death and funeral,--when he saw how fair and
beautiful a promise of girlhood was budding on the poor neglected
branch, he said to his assistant, "Will you keep this child with you
until the war is over? I am afraid to touch her, or interfere with her
destiny. It has been so easy for me to mar, so hard to mend."

* * * * *

Miss Ames kept the child; the war ended. The surgeon then, like other
men, returned home; his regiments were disbanded, and now, one duty, to
mankind and the ages, well discharged, another, less conspicuous, but as
urgent, claimed him. There was Janet, and Janet's mother,--she who had
risen, not from the grave indeed, but from the midst of dangers,
sacredly to guard and guide the child.

On his way to them he asked himself this question, "How many times must
a man be born before he is fit to live?"

He did not answer that question; neither can I.

He informed his assistant of the court's decision in reference to the
plea of "incompatibility," and she said that the justice of the sentence
was not to be controverted with success by any counsellor on earth; but
the reader may smile, and say that it was not di