tle-hearted nurses who stood waiting in the
hospital wards,--work which required tenderest care;--removing the rags,
washing the fevered skeletons, bathing the bleeding wounds where the
sharp bones had pierced the skin; feeding them,--a crumb at a time;
administering cordials drop by drop, to bring back with delicate nursing
the receding tides of life.

With a bleeding heart, but yet with steady nerves, Azalia passed among
them, doing her appointed work. There was one who was lying as if
asleep, with his hands clasped upon his breast. His beard had been long
uncut. His cheeks were wasted, his eyes sunken, but he had a manly brow.
A strange fear and trembling crept over her,--a shuddering of the heart.
Alarmed and frightened at she knew not what, she brushed back the
matted hair from his temples, and laid her hand upon his brow, cold and
damp with the dews of death. The soldier opened his eyes, looked into
her face, stared wildly around him, and tried to speak. It was but one
word, and that a whisper,--her own name, "Azalia!"

A cry rang through the ward, startling the physicians and the nurses,
and waking those who were asleep. She clasped him in her arms, fell upon
his face, and kissed his wasted lips. "O Paul! Can it be that you are
here?" she said.

The throbbing of her heart was like the fluttering of a frightened bird.
Sweet, calm, and beautiful as the setting sun was the smile upon his
face, and in his eyes the celestial light of Peace! They closed, and he
lay again as if in slumber.

"They told me that you were dead," she said.

There was no reply; she laid her hand upon his heart, but could feel no
beating there; touched her fingers to his fleshless wrist, but could
find no throbbing of the pulse. The thin blood was receding from his
colorless lips,--the tide was going out. "Doctor! Doctor! O come quick!
Save him!" she cried.

The doctor came and gazed upon the face of Paul. "He is not quite gone,"
he said, then moistened his lips with brandy. There was a quickening of
the pulse. "If he rallies from this, we may save him," he said.

They wrapped him in warm flannels, rubbed his fleshless limbs, and gave
him cordials, drop by drop. How long the hours,--the weary hours of hope
and fear,--of expectation and distress,--while the faltering spirit, as
if tired of earth, was but fluttering awhile along the shore of Time
before taking its returnless flight over the dark and silent river to
another land! Through