id him on that couch yonder. My boy!
I had never seen him so white and weak,--he who had been so strong
always. All my strength seemed gone, and I sank beside him as he held
out his hand for me to come to him. He was but a lad in years, but he
had a power of earnest courage many men of riper years do not possess.
Shot six times, he had insisted upon returning, after the dressing of
each wound, to the struggle going on so fiercely, heeding nothing,
fearing nothing, until, in that last battle, he had received the seventh
wound,--the seventh and the last. He lived two days after they brought
him home; and his sufferings! I shudder now when I think of them. He
died as he had lived,--strong and brave to the last. He was a handsome
lad, and he was beautiful in death. Oh, how I missed him! how I have
missed him all these years! Yet as I stood alone, bending over the
coffin, before they bore him out of the dear home forever, I knew all
his terrible pain was over, and through blinding tears I thanked God as
I have never thanked him since. I felt as if I should like to die too;
but soon the numb feeling passed away. Mother was failing, and she,
father, and the other boys leaned upon me as woman can be leaned on, and
I was beginning to be happier. In the train of the French general,
Lafayette, was a young soldier, Chevalier de Rosseau, and he had known
Harold, and loved him. He would come often to the house, and one day he
brought his sister Manon, who had followed him from France. She was the
loveliest little creature I ever saw. I call her little,--although she
was three years my senior,--she was so small and delicate. We became
great friends, and she told me, in her pretty, affectionate way, how she
had been afraid to cross the great ocean, but that she could not bear to
be separated from her brother, who was all she had, and so she had,
after trying in vain to live without seeing him for many months,
conquered her fear and crossed to America. But after a time La Fayette
prepared to return to France. Then it was that my life-trouble came to
me. Chevalier de Rosseau loved me, and I loved him; but when he asked my
father's consent to wed me he was sternly refused. My father had always
seemed to like the young count, and we had no fear of his opposition;
you can imagine, therefore, our dismay and grief. We sought in vain for
a reason for his refusal; he gave none. In vain my lover pleaded. I
could say nothing. In those times a daugh