ugh the word
"love" had hardly been written in those glowing letters, he reasoned
rightly that love alone could prompt a man to write day after day in all
the excitements and vicissitudes of stirring campaign. As for the
rest--was he not an Abbot? Did not Guthrie know and honor him? Was he
not a gallant officer as well as a thoroughbred gentleman? No time for
wooing now! That would come with peace. He had even given his consent
when she blushingly asked him if she might--"Well, _there!_ read it
yourself," she said, putting the closely written page into his hands. It
was an eager plea for her picture--and the photograph was sent. He chose
the one himself, a dainty "vignette" on card, for it reminded him of the
mother who was gone. It was fitting, he told himself, that his
daughter--her sainted mother's image, Guthrie's sister--should love a
gallant soldier. He gloried in the accounts of Paul Abbot's bravery, and
longed to meet him and take him by the hand. The time would come. He
could wait and watch over the little girl who was drawing them together.
He asked no questions. It would all be right.

And now they stood together at the station waiting for the evening cars
and the latest news from the front. It lacked but a few minutes of train
time when, with sad and sympathetic face, the station-agent approached,
a fateful brown envelope in his hand. The doctor turned quickly at his
daughter's gasping exclamation,

"_Papa!_ Mr. Hardy has a telegram!"

Despite every effort his hand and lip trembled violently as he took it
and tore it open. It was brief enough--an answer to his repeated
despatches to the War Department.

"Lieutenant Paul R. Abbot, dangerously wounded, is at field hospital
near Frederick, Maryland."

The doctor turned to her pale, pleading face, tears welling in his eyes.

"Be brave, my little girl," he murmured, brokenly. "He is wounded, but
we can go to him at once."

Nearly sunset again, and the South Mountain is throwing its dark shadow
clear across the Monocacy. The day has been warm, cloudless, beautiful,
and, now that evening is approaching, the sentries begin to saunter out
from the deeper shade that has lured them during the afternoon and to
give a more soldierly tone to the picture. There are not many of them,
to be sure, and this is evidently the encampment of no large command of
troops, despite the number of big white tents pitched in the orchard,
and the score of white-topped army-wagons,