ny voices are
cheerful and tell of life; you are not with the dead--you are simply
with the glories of the past.

But it is different when you come to the Wilderness. Here you really
walk with ghosts. There are no monuments, no sunshine, no green grass,
no voices; all is silent, somber and lonely, telling of desolation and
decay. To many it is a more real monument than the clustering shafts of
Gettysburg. All this silence, all this abandonment tell in solemn and
majestic tones that here not one great battle was fought, but many; that
here in one year shone the most brilliant triumph of the South; and
here, in another year, she fought her death struggle.

When you walk among the bushes and the scrub oaks and listen to the
desolate wind you need no inscription to tell you that you are in the
Wilderness.

CHAPTER XVIII

DAY IN THE WILDERNESS

Helen Harley saw the sun rise in a shower of red and gold on a May
morning, and then begin a slow and quiet sail up a sky of silky blue. It
even touched the gloomy shades of the Wilderness with golden gleams, and
shy little flowers of purple, nestling in the scant grass, held up their
heads to the glow. From the window in the log house in which she had
nursed her brother she looked out at the sunrise and saw only peace, and
the leaves of the new spring foliage moving gently in the wind.

The girl's mind was not at rest. In the night she had heard the rumbling
of wheels, the tread of feet, and many strange, muffled sounds. Now the
morning was here and the usual court about her was missing. Gone were
the epaulets, the plumes and the swords in sheath. The generals, Raymond
and Winthrop, who had come only the day before. Talbot, Prescott and
Wood, were all missing.

The old house seemed desolate, abandoned, and she was lonely. She looked
through the window and saw nothing that lived among the bushes and the
scrub oaks only the scant grass and the new spring foliage waving in the
gentle wind. Here smouldered the remains of a fire and there another,
and yonder was where the tent of the Commander had stood; but it was
gone now, and not a sound came to her ears save those of the forest. She
was oppressed by the silence and the portent.

Her brother lay upon the bed asleep in full uniform, his coat covering
his bandages, and Mrs. Markham was in the next room, having refused to
return to Richmond. She would remain near her husband, she said, but
Helen felt absolutely alone, de