r so dear as now, when separated by so many
miles, with prison walls on every side, and an enemy's line between
them.

"But be of good cheer, darling," he wrote. "I shall come back to you
some time, and life will he all the brighter for what you suffer now. I
am so glad my darling consented to be my wife, even though I could stay
with her but a moment. The knowing you are really mine makes me happy
even here, for I think of you by day, and in my dreams I always hold you
in my arms and press you to my heart."

Far different from this cheerful letter was the one which Tom inclosed
in it for his family--a wild, homesick outburst, containing so much of
truth that it was strange it was ever permitted to leave the city. Of
this letter Helen heard by way of Mattie Tubbs, and hope died within
her, especially as Tom spoke of their being sent further South as a
probable event.

"If Mark goes I shall never see him again," Helen said, despairingly;
and when at last the message came that Mark had been removed, and that,
too, just at the time when an exchange was constantly expected, she gave
him up as lost, feeling almost as much widowed as Katy in her weeds.

Slowly the winter passed away, and the country was rife with stories of
the inhuman treatment of our men, daily dying by hundreds, while those
who survived the cruelties were reduced to maniacs and imbeciles. And
Helen, as she listened, grew nearly frantic with the sickening suspense.
She did not know now where her husband was. He had made several attempts
to escape, and with each failure had been removed to safer quarters, so
that the chances now of his being exchanged seemed very far away. Week
after week, month after month, passed on, until came the memorable
battle of the Wilderness, when Lieutenant Bob, as yet unharmed, stood
bravely in the thickest of the fight, his tall figure towering above the
rest, and his soldier's uniform buttoned over a dark tress of hair, and
a face like Bell Cameron's, Lieutenant Bob had taken two or three
furloughs, but the one which had left the sweetest, pleasantest memory
in his heart was that of the autumn before, when the crimson leaves of
the maple and the golden tints of the beech were burning themselves out
on the hills of Silverton, where his furlough was mostly passed, and
where, with Bell Cameron, he scoured the length and breadth of Uncle
Ephraim's farm, now stopping by the shore of Fairy Pond and again
sitting for hours on a le