rowfully laid it back again upon his heart. 'I
thought to go back to her a colonel at least--a general, perhaps,' he
went on, with a piteous smile; 'to be crowned with laurels, loaded with
honors and proudly claim her as my bride: I little thought that this
would be the end!' It was a man's grave comment on a boy's wild dream.
He had buried his youth in those two weeks of anguish. It was a man's
face that looked upon me, and I read in it a man's strong endurance and
stern resolve. That, and the smile with which he said it, moved me more
than any emotion, however hopeless or despairing, could have done. My
grief burst forth anew.

Dearer, a thousand times dearer, now that love had left him, and
youthful friends turned coldly away. Ah! thank God! bless God! There are
none so dear to each other, so inexpressibly dear, as those whom sorrow
joins; no tie that binds so closely as the sacred bond of suffering. I
said so brokenly, sobbing out my love and sorrow, as I held him to my
heart. His longing for home had been intense; now that he had seen me,
it became wellnigh insupportable. To go away from this his place of
suffering--from the myriad eyes bent upon him here, and creep back
broken-hearted to that sacred sheltering haven, and hide his great grief
there--this wish absorbed him quite. 'I want to go home, Maggie,' he
said, in a broken-hearted whisper, clinging to me the while; 'I want to
go home and die.' Die! I wouldn't hear the word; I stopped its
half-formed utterance with tears and kisses. The doctor shook his head
at the suggestion and counselled delay; but he was burning with
impatience, and I was resolute. We started the very next day. We
travelled by easy stages, but he grew weaker all the time: toward the
last, with his head upon my breast, he would sleep for hours, peacefully
as a little child. Reduced to almost infant weakness when we reached our
journey's end, they took him in their arms tenderly as they would have
taken an infant, and laid him on my bed. There, in that darkened room, I
nursed him night and day, striving to win him back to thoughts of life,
and love of it. 'It's too late, Maggie,' he would say, with placid
resignation; 'life has nothing for me, dear; I want to go to sleep--to
that long, dreamless sleep, where memory never wakes to haunt us!' But
I couldn't bear it--I wouldn't have it so. I bade him think of how _my_
heart would break if he, too, died and left me! In my earnest love, I
called H