she will be."

Then a little hand began stroking his arm and a still damp face was
being rubbed against his shoulder, and presently a soft voice whispered:
"Father, you have always been too good to me. You never said a word and
you knew it all along, I guess!" which rather incoherent speech may be
excused under the circumstances.

The few weeks that followed were not as gloomy to Liddy as later ones.
Her home duties outside of school hours had always been numerous, and
now she found them a relief. Letters also came frequently from the
absent one, and she felt that he was not yet in danger--that was a grain
of consolation. But when he wrote that they were to start for the front
the next day, her heart grew heavy again and from that time on the dread
suspense was never lifted. She wrote him frequently and tried to make
her letters brave and cheerful. All the simple details of her home life
were faithfully portrayed, and it became a habit to write him a page
every night. She called it a little chat, but it might better have been
called an evening prayer, for into those tender words were woven every
sweet wish and hopeful petition of a loving woman's heart. After the
battle of Chancellorsville a cloud seemed resting upon Southton, and
Liddy felt that the weary waiting was becoming more oppressive than
ever. It had been her father's custom to drive "over town," as it was
called, once a day to obtain the news, and she had always met him on his
return, even before he entered the house, to more quickly learn the
worst. She began to dread even this, lest he should bring the tidings
she feared most.

Then came the call for needed supplies to be used in the care of the
wounded, and gladly Liddy joined with other good ladies in picking lint,
preparing bandages, and the like, and contributing many articles for the
use and comfort of the soldiers. In this noble work she came to realize
how many other hearts besides her own carried a burden, and to feel a
kinship of sorrow with them. Her engagement to Manson seemed to be
generally known and the common burden soon obliterated her first girlish
reticence concerning it.

"I feel that I am growing old very fast," she wrote him, "and that I am
a girl no longer. Just think, it is only ten months since I felt angry
when some of the girls told me they heard I was engaged to you, and now
I don't care who knows it."

For the next three months there were no battles that he was engaged in,