orning air, strains of martial music filling it, a waving of caps and
handkerchiefs, shouts in the streets below, and the tramp of many feet.
A regiment is passing! To a stern fate, that beckons darkly in the
distance, these patriots are moving, with firm, determined tread--to
long, exhausting marches, and fireless bivouac; to hunger and cold; to
sufferings in varied forms; to wounds and imprisonment; _to death_! God
knows when and how they are going;--and, amid the doomed throng slowly
passing, the bright face of my darling smilingly upturned to mine. I
wave my hand and kiss it; my handkerchief is wet through and through.

He came to me but an hour since, decked in his uniform (a lamb decked
for the slaughter). 'I'm a lieutenant now,' he said, tapping his
shoulder gaily; 'I shall rival Sam Patch at a leap, and jump to the head
at once. Three months is enough to make a colonel of me.' And so, with
his young heart beating high and warm, upborne by wild hopes like these,
he held me to his heart at parting, and went away quite joyously, my
poor darling! shedding only a few tears in sympathy with mine. I watch
his form until I lose it in the mass before me; then I watch the mass
moving slowly, slowly on, bearing him away from me; till the heavy tramp
dies out upon the air, and the dark mass, growing less and less, becomes
a dim speck in the distance; and the music wanes, and wanes, and dies
out also, and in the still air about me only the voice of the wind is
heard: coming and going at long, lazy intervals, it speaks to my inner
sense with a warning note, a low requiem sound. Why is it that it takes
that weird tone always when sorrow is darkly waiting for me in the
future? What prophet's voice speaks to me in it? What invisible thing
without addresses its wild warning to the invisible within? As I
listened, my soul grew chill and dark with the shadow of a coming gloom;
my heart grew cold. God help me! How wildly, how almost despairingly I
prayed for my darling's life!

Alone in the world, we were all in all to each other. Mine was a wild,
exclusive love. Heart and soul were bound up in him. Other girls had
their lovers; my fond heart beat for him alone. What tie nearer and
dearer than the tie of blood united us? What bond, sacred and invisible,
bound our souls together? I know not; I only know that my heart and mind
echoed always the thoughts and moods of his; that, no matter what dreary
distance lay between us, our souls h