hat Mark Ray might be
spared. Then when the battle was over, and up the Northern hills came
the dreadful story of thousands and thousands slain, there was a fearful
look in her eyes, and her features were rigid as marble, while the
quivering lips could scarcely pray for the great fear tugging at her
heart. Mark Ray was not with his men when they came from that terrific
onslaught. A dozen had seen him fall, struck down by a rebel ball, and
that was all she heard for more than a week, when there came another
relay of news.

Captain Mark Ray was a prisoner of war, with several of his own company.
An inmate of Libby Prison and a sharer from choice of the apartment
where his men were confined. As an officer, he was entitled to better
quarters than the filthy pen where the poor privates were, but Mark Ray
had a large, warm heart, and he would not desert those who had been so
faithful to him, and so he took their fare, and by his genial humor and
unwavering cheerfulness kept many a heart from fainting and made the
prisoners' life more bearable than it could have been without him. To
young Tom Tubbs, who had enlisted six months before, he was a
ministering angel, and many times the poor, homesick boy crept to the
side of his captain, and laying his burning head in his lap, wept
himself to sleep and dreamed he was at home again. The horrors of that
prison life have never been told, but Mark bore up manfully, suffering
less in mind, perhaps, than did the friends at home, who lived, as it
were, a thousand years in that one brief summer while he languished in
that horrid den whose very name had a power to send a thrill of fear to
every heart.

At last, as the frosty days of October came on, they began to hope he
might be exchanged, and Helen's face grew bright again, until one day
there came a soiled, half-worn letter, in Mark's own handwriting. It was
the first word received from him since his capture in July, and with a
cry of joy Helen snatched it from Uncle Ephraim, for she was still at
the farmhouse, and sitting down upon the doorstep just where she had
been standing, read the words which Mark had sent to her. He said
nothing of the treatment he received, for he wanted the letter to reach
her, and he knew well that if he complained the chances were small for
the missive ever to leave the capital of the "chivalry." He was very
well, he said, and had been all the time, but he pined for home, longing
for the dear girl-wife neve