gn, and here he won
his stripes, and words of praise from the lips of a veteran general
officer, as well as the promise of future reward; and then the love of
soldierly deeds and the thirst for soldierly renown took firm hold in
his breast. He began to turn towards the mother and father who had been
wrapped up in his future,--who loved him so devotedly. He was forgetting
his early and passionate love, and the bitter sorrow of her death was
losing fast its poignant power to steel him against his kindred. He knew
they could not but be proud of the record he had made in the ranks of
the gallant ----th, and then he shrank and shivered when he recalled the
dreadful words of his curse. He had made up his mind to write, implore
pardon for his hideous and unfilial language, and invoke their interest
in his career, when, returning to Fort Raines for supplies, he picked up
a New York paper in the reading-room and read the announcement of his
father's death, "whose health had been broken ever since the
disappearance of his only son, two years before." The memory of his
malediction had, indeed, come home to him, and he fell, stricken by a
sudden and unaccountable blow. It seemed as though his heart had given
one wild leap, then stopped forever. Things did not go so well after
this. He brooded over his words, and believed that an avenging God had
launched the bolt that killed the father as punishment to the stubborn
and recreant son. He then bethought him of his mother, of pretty Alice,
who had loved him so as a little girl. He could not bring himself to
write, but through inquiries he learned that the house was closed and
that they had gone abroad. He plodded on in his duties a trying year:
then came more lively field-work and reviving interest. He was
forgetting entirely the sting of his first great sorrow, and mourning
gravely the gulf he had placed 'twixt him and his. He thought time and
again of his cruel words, and something began to whisper to him he must
see that mother again at once, kiss her hand, and implore her
forgiveness, or she, too, would be stricken suddenly. He saved up his
money, hoping that after the summer's rifle-work at Sibley he might get
a furlough and go East; and the night he arrived at the fort, tired with
his long railway-journey and panting after a long and difficult climb
up-hill, his mother's face swam suddenly before his eyes, and he felt
himself going down. When they brought him to, he heard that the