t remember now you are speaking to a
Southern woman."

"But think a moment, and--" he began.

"Leave me this instant," she said excitedly, "or I shall call others
with more the heart of men than you to my assistance. Accept your
offer?" she continued with all the scorn she could use. "Accept such
an offer from a _Yankee_! Go, I would despise and hate were you not
too despicable for either feeling of enmity."

Several persons approaching at that moment, he moved away hurriedly
after hissing in her ear: "Take your choice. In either one way or the
other I am revenged on you for the way you rejected my addresses in
past years."

She landed on the shore, and a few minutes after the boat moved back
on its way to New Orleans, when taking her small trunk in her hands
the soldier's wife, with her two children, started on their long and
lively march. For where? She knew not. There she was, an utter
stranger with two tender children, far from her home, and with only
two hundred dollars in money. Where could she go to for support. Her
husband was in a foreign prison, and she a wanderer in a strange
State. Her heart sank within her, and the soldier's wife wept. Aye,
wept! Not tears of regret at what she had sacrificed, but tears of
loneliness. Who would not weep if they were parted from those they
love, and were cast in a strange land without a friend, and with
scarcely any means?

We leave the soldier's wife for a brief while, and transport the
reader to her husband. Her trials have commenced--God help her!

CHAPTER EIGHTH.

THE PRISONERS--THE HUSBAND AND THE LOVER.

We stated that on the recovery of Alfred Wentworth and Lieutenant
Shackleford from their wounds, both were sent to Camp Douglas
together, and as Alfred had no regiment of his own captured, the
lieutenant promptly requested him to become one of his mess. The
generous courage exhibited by Alfred Wentworth, and the fact that but
for his chivalric attention, he should have died on the bloody field
of Fort Donelson, had created a feeling of gratitude in Lieutenant
Shackleford for his preserver, which, on closer acquaintance, had
ripened into a warm friendship, and he soon made Alfred acquainted
with the fact of his betrothal to Emma Humphries, and Alfred in turn
would speak of his wife and children in such tones of affection as
only those who love can use. They would sit down for hours and
converse on the loved ones at home, thus wiling away the sad and