ad not deeply, even
desolately, mourned her untimely death. Margaret Welland was not a woman
to be soon forgotten. For six years she had been the object almost of
reverence among the officers and men of her husband's regiment, almost
of worship among the women. Gentle, generous, and charitable, gifted
with many a physical charm and almost every spiritual grace, she had
lived her brief life in the army an uncrowned queen, and died a
martyr--almost a saint. For long weeks afterward the women would weep at
mere mention of her name. The casket that bore the fragile, lifeless
form and that of her infant daughter to their final rest was literally
buried in flowers that were wet with tears. Strong men, too, turned
aside or hid their faces in trembling hands when with bowed head Oswald
Dwight was led by, clasping to his breast his sobbing little boy. There
were some who said that Dwight could never have pulled up again if it
hadn't been for Jimmy. It was long months before the stricken soldier
was restored to them. It was longer still before little Jim returned,
and every day meantime, after Dwight's appearance, regularly as he rose
and went silently about his duties, the father wrote his letter to be
read aloud to his only living child, and the one thing that spurred the
merry-hearted little fellow to his studies was the longing to read and
to answer for himself. Jim's first missive to his father, penned by his
own infinite labor, was the event of the second winter at Fort Riley,
for it was shown in succession to nearly every comrade and to every even
remotely sympathetic woman at the post. There were maidens there who
would fain have consoled the tall, distinguished, dark-eyed trooper, so
interesting in his depth of melancholy, so eligible as a catch, for
Dwight, for an army man, was oddly well to do. Obstinately, however, he
refused all consolation from even such a sympathetic source, and would
for long brook no companion on his solitary walks or rides. All his talk
now was of his boy. All his thoughts, plans, projects, seemed centering
on little Jim, who, for the time being, had to be housed among his
mother's people. He was still too young for the care of a soldier-father
who any day might be compelled to take the field. But then came station
at Fort Riley, with its big garrison, its school and its society, and
then the yearning at his heart could no longer be denied. The Wellands
nearly cried their eyes out when Oswald, tow