s wound, though not dangerous, was
enough to disable him and get him a furlough, and he determined to take
his son's body home, which the captain's influence enabled him to do.
Between his wound and his grief the old man was nearly helpless, and
accepted Darby's silent assistance with mute gratitude. Darby asked him
to tell his mother that he was getting on well, and sent her what money
he had--his last two months' pay--not enough to have bought her a pair
of stockings or a pound of sugar. The only other message he sent was
given at the station just as Cove set out. He said:

"Tell Vashti as I got him as done it."

Old Cove grasped his hand tremulously and faltered his promise to do so,
and the next moment the train crawled away and left Darby to plod back
to camp in the rain, vague and lonely in the remnant of what had once
been a gray uniform. If there was one thing that troubled him it was
that he could not return Vashti the needle-case until he replaced the
broken needles--and there were so many of them broken.

After this Darby was in some sort known, and was put pretty constantly
on sharp-shooter service.

The men went into winter quarters before Darby heard anything from home.
It came one day in the shape of a letter in the only hand in the world
he knew--Vashti's. What it could mean he could not divine--was his
mother dead? This was the principal thing that occurred to him. He
studied the outside. It had been on the way a month by the postmark,
for letters travelled slowly in those days, and a private soldier in an
infantry company was hard to find unless the address was pretty clear,
which this was not. He did not open it immediately. His mother must be
dead, and this he could not face. Nothing else would have made Vashti
write. At last he went off alone and opened it, and read it, spelling
it out with some pains. It began without an address, with the simple
statement that her father had arrived with Ad's body and that it
had been buried, and that his wound was right bad and her mother was
mightily cut up with her trouble. Then it mentioned his mother and said
she had come to Ad's funeral, though she could not walk much now and
had never been over to their side since the day after he--Darby--had
enlisted; but her father had told her as how he had killed the man as
shot Ad, and so she made out to come that far. Then the letter broke
off from giving news, and as if under stress of feelings long pent up,
sudde