our pairs of blue socks knit by
her fair hands, was a loving letter and a picture of herself.

Almost a month after came the battle of Tracy City and the fall of brave
Captain Upson. There were others wounded, but none of his company were
killed. It was here Manson received his first promotion to a corporal's
position, and he was afterward made sergeant. In the spring that
followed, and almost one year from the day he first told Liddy of his
love, came the battle of Boyd's Trail. Five days after, when the moon
was full one night, he wrote by the light of a camp fire: "Do you
remember one year ago to-day, and where we were and what I said? I little
realized that day what was in store for me. One thing I must tell you,
however, and that is you can never know how much comfort it has been to
me to live over all the happy hours we have had together. Every little
word and look of love from you has come back to me again and again in my
long, lonesome hours of picket duty, and to-night as I sit by the camp
fire and see the moon shining through the trees I can recall just how I
felt the first time I kissed you, when the same moon seemed to be
laughing at me. Do you remember one night when we were driving across
the plains on our way back from a little party over to Marion, and you
sang that 'Meet Me by Moonlight' ballad? That was three years ago, and
yet I can almost hear your voice now."

When this letter reached Liddy she read it in tears.

For the next year it was with Manson as with all that slowly decreasing
company--one unending round of nervous strain, long marches, sharp
fighting, or, worse yet--carrying the wounded from the battlefield and
burying the dead. They lived poorly, slept on the ground or in the mud
at times, and became accustomed to filth and stench, indifferent to
danger and hardened to death. When a comrade fell those who knew him
best said: "Poor fellow, he's gone," and buried him without a prayer;
but the dead who were personally unknown awakened no more feeling than
so many leaves fallen by the wayside. It could not well be otherwise,
for such is war. Individual cases of heroism were common enough, and
passed almost unnoticed; for they were all brave men who came to fight
and die if need be, and no less was expected.

War makes strange bedfellows, and forms unexpected friendships. It was
after the battle of Gettysburg, when the Tenth Army Corps remained in
camp for several months, and one night while