mother and the women at
home had less even than they in the field. He had never seen, even
in their poorest days after his father's death, not only the house
absolutely empty, but without any means of getting anything outside. It
gave him a thrill to think what she must have endured without letting
him know. As soon as he could leave her, he went into the woods with his
old gun, and shortly returned with a few squirrels which he cooked for
her; the first meat, she told him, that she had tasted for weeks. On
hearing it his heart grew hot. Why had not Vashti come and seen about
her? She explained it partly, however, when she told him that every one
had been sick at Cove Mills's, and old Cove himself had come near
dying. No doctor could be got to see them, as there was none left in the
neighborhood, and but for Mrs. Douwill she did not know what they would
have done. But Mrs. Douwill was down herself now.

The young man wanted to know about Vashti, but all he could manage to
make his tongue ask was,

"Vashti?"

She could not tell him, she did not know anything about Vashti. Mrs.
Mills used to bring her things sometimes, till she was taken down, but
Vashti had never come to see her; all she knew was that she had been
sick with the others.

That she had been sick awoke in the young man a new tenderness, the
deeper because he had done her an injustice; and he was seized with a
great longing to see her. All his old love seemed suddenly accumulated
in his heart, and he determined to go and see her at once, as he had not
long to stay. He set about his little preparations forthwith, putting
on his old clothes which his mother had kept ever since he went away, as
being more presentable than the old worn and muddy, threadbare uniform,
and brushing his long yellow hair and beard into something like order.
He changed from one coat to the other the little package which he always
carried, thinking that he would show it to her with the hole in it,
which the sharp-shooter's bullet had made that day, and he put her
letter into the same pocket; his heart beating at the sight of her hand
and the memory of the words she had written, and then he set out. It
was already late in the evening, and after the rain the air was soft and
balmy, though the western sky was becoming overcast again by a cloud,
which low down on the horizon was piling up mountain on mountain of
vapor, as if it might rain again by night. Darby, however, having
dressed,