Hugh made her no reply, and they proceeded on in silence, until they
came in sight of Spring Bank, when ’Lina broke out afresh, “Such a
tumble-down shanty as that! It was not fit for decent people to live in,
and mercy knew she was glad her sojourn there was to be short.”

“You are not alone in that feeling,” came dryly from Hugh, who could not
forbear that remark.

’Lina said he was a very affectionate brother; that she was glad there
were those who appreciated her, even if he did not, and then the
carriage stopped at Spring Bank, where the family stood waiting for her
upon the long piazza. Mrs. Worthington was hearty in her welcome, for
her mother heart went out warmly towards her daughter, who, as
bride-elect of a Richards, was, in her estimation, a creature of more
importance than plain ’Lina had been, with nothing in prospect. Oh, what
airs ’Lina did put on, and what pains she took to appear _cityfied_,
merely noticing the expectant negroes with a “how dye,” offering the
tips of her fingers to good Aunt Eunice, trying to patronize Alice
herself, and only noticing Densie Densmore with a haughty stare.

“Upon my word,” ’Lina began, as she entered the pleasant parlor, “this
is better than I expected. Somebody has been very kind for my sake. Miss
Johnson, I am sure it’s you I have to thank,” and with a little flush of
gratitude she turned to Alice, who replied in a low tone, “Thank your
brother. He made a sacrifice for the sake of surprising you.”

Whether it was a desire to appear amiable in Alice’s eyes, or because
she really was touched with Hugh’s generosity, ’Lina involuntarily threw
her arm around his neck, and gave to him a kiss which he remembered for
a long, long time.

Swiftly the days went by, bringing callers to see ’Lina, Ellen Tiffton,
who received back her jewelry, and who was to be bridesmaid, inasmuch as
Alice preferred to be more at liberty, and see that matters went on
properly. This brought Ellen often to Spring Bank, and as ’Lina was much
with her, Alice was left more time to think. Adah’s continued silence
with regard to Dr. Richards had troubled her at first, but now she felt
relieved. ’Lina had stated distinctly that ere coming to Kentucky he was
going to Terrace Hill, and Adah’s last letter had said the same. She
would see him then, and—if he were George—alas, for the unsuspecting
girl who fluttered gaily in the midst of her bridal finery, and wished
the time would come when “she could escape from that hole, and go back
to dear, delightful Fifth Avenue Hotel.”

The time which hung so heavily upon her hands was flying rapidly, and at
last only a week intervened ere the eventful day. Hugh had gone down to
Frankfort on an errand to the dressmaker’s for ’Lina, and finding that
he must wait some time, it occurred to him to visit the Penitentiary,
where he had not been for a long time. The keeper, a personal friend of
Hugh’s, expressed much pleasure at meeting him, and after a moment, said
laughingly,

“We have no _lions_ to show just now, unless it be Sullivan, the negro
stealer. You have never seen him, I think, since he was sent to us. You
know whom I mean, the man who ran off Uncle Sam.”

Yes, Hugh knew, but he was not especially interested in him. Still he
followed the keeper, who said that Sullivan’s time expired in a few
days.

“We’ll find him on the rope-walk,” he continued. “We put our hardest
customers there. Not that he gives us trouble, for he does not, and I
rather like the chap, but we have a spite against these Yankee
negro-stealers,” and he led the way to the long low room, where groups
of men walked up and down—up and down—holding the long line of hemp,
which, as far as they were concerned, would never come to an end until
the day of their release.

“That’s he,” the keeper whispered to Hugh, “the one with that mark upon
his forehead,” and he pointed to one of the convicts advancing slowly
towards them.

With a start and a shudder Hugh grew cold and sick, for it needed but a
glance to assure him that he stood in the presence of Adah’s guardian,
whose sudden disappearance had been so mysterious. Hugh never knew how
he kept himself from leaping into that walk and compelling him to tell
if he knew anything of Willie Hastings’ father. He did, indeed, take one
forward step, but the next moment he controlled himself as he remembered
where he was, and knew it was no place for a scene. “But I must see
him,” he thought, “I must talk with him and compel him to tell me what
he knows of Adah Hastings.”

Hastily quitting the spot, he explained to the keeper that there was a
particular reason for his talking with Sullivan, and asked permission to
do so. At first the keeper hesitated, but finally consented, and an hour
later, when the convicts left their work, Hugh Worthington was
confronting the famous negro-stealer, who gave him back glance for
glance, and stood unflinchingly before him as if there were upon his
conscience no Adah Hastings, who, by his connivance, had been so
terribly wronged. At the mention of _her_ name, however, his bold
assurance left him. There was a quivering of the muscles about his
mouth, a humid moisture upon his eyelids, and his whole manner was
indicative of strong emotion as he asked if Hugh knew aught of her, and
then listened while Hugh told what he knew, and where she had gone.

“To Terrace Hill—into the Richards family, this was no chance
arrangement,” and the convict spoke huskily asking next for the doctor,
was he at home? had he met Adah yet? and still Hugh did not suspect the
magnitude of the plot, and answered by telling how Dr. Richards was
coming soon to make ’Lina his wife.

Hugh was not looking at his companion then, or he would have been
appalled by the fearful expression which for an instant flashed on his
face, and then quickly passed away, leaving there a look of terror and
concern. Accustomed to conceal his feelings, the convict did so now, and
asked calmly when the wedding would take place. Hugh named the day and
hour, and then asked impatiently, if Sullivan knew aught of Adah’s
husband.

“Yes, everything,” and the convict spoke vehemently, for he, too, saw
the keeper consult his watch, and knew that he must hasten.

“Young man, I cannot tell you now—there is not time, but wait and you
shall know the whole. You are interested in Adah. You have been kind to
her. You never will be sorry. The wedding, you say, is Thursday night.
My time expires on Wednesday.

“Don’t say that you have seen me, or that I shall be present at that
wedding. I shall only come for good, but I shall surely be there.”

He wrung Hugh’s hand and went to his lonely cell, while Hugh turned
away, haunted by some presentiment of evil, and hearing continually the
words, fraught with far more meaning than he supposed, “I shall surely
be there.”

                             CHAPTER XXXII.
                        THE DAY OF THE WEDDING.

Dr. Richards had arrived at Spring Bank. He, too, had been detained in
Cincinnati, and did not reach his destination until late on Wednesday
evening. Hugh was the first to meet him, for Alice had retired, and
’Lina had fled from the room at the first sound of the voice she had
been so anxiously waiting for. For a moment Hugh scrutinized the
stranger’s face earnestly, and then asked if they had never met before.

“Not to my knowledge,” the doctor replied in perfect good faith, for he
had no suspicion that the man eyeing him so closely was the one witness
of his marriage with Adah, the stranger whom he scarcely noticed, and
whose name he had forgotten.

Once fully in the light, where Hugh could discern the features plainer,
he began to be less sure of having met his guest before, for that
immense mustache and those well-trimmed whiskers, had changed the
doctor’s physiognomy materially.

’Lina now came stealing in, affecting such a pretty coyness of manner,
that Hugh felt like roaring with laughter and ere long hurried out where
he could indulge his merriment.

’Lina was glad to see the doctor. She had even cried at his delay; and
though no one knew it, had sat up nearly the whole preceding night,
waiting and listening by her open window for any sound to herald his
approach, and once she had stolen out with her thin slippers into the
yard, standing on the damp ground a long time, and only returning to the
house when she felt a chill creeping over her, and knew she was taking
cold.

As the result of this long vigil, her head ached dreadfully the next
day, and even the doctor noticed her burning cheeks and watery eyes, and
feeling her rapid pulse asked if she were ill.

She was not, she said; she had only been troubled, because he did not
come, and then for once in her life she did a womanly act. She laid her
head in the doctor’s lap and cried, just as she had done the previous
night. He understood the cause of her tears at last, and touched with a
greater degree of tenderness for her than he had ever before
experienced, he smoothed her glossy black hair, and asked, “Would you be
very sorry to lose me?”

Selfish and hard as she was, ’Lina loved the doctor, and with a shudder
as she thought of the deception imposed on him, and a half regret that
she had so deceived him, she replied, “I am not worthy of you, but I do
love you very much, and it would kill me to lose you now. Promise that
when you find, as you will, how bad I am, you will not hate me!”

It was an attempt at confession, but the doctor did not so construe it.
Whatever her errors were, his, he knew, were tenfold greater, and so he
continued smoothing her hair, while he tried to say the words of
affection he knew she was waiting to hear.

It was very dark that night, and the doctor received only a vague idea
of Spring Bank and its surroundings, and that did not impress him as
grandly as he had thought it would. But then, he reflected that
Southerners were not as noted for fine houses as Northerners were, and
so felt secure as yet, wondering which of the negroes he had seen
belonged to ’Lina, and which to Hugh. He knew Lulu was not to accompany
his wife to Terrace Hill, for ’Lina had told him so, saying that in the
present state of excited feeling she did not think it best to take a
negro slave to New England. He knew, too, that nothing had been said
about money or lands coming to him with his bride, but he took it all on
trust, and looked rather complacently around the prettily furnished
chamber to which, at a late hour, he was conducted by Hugh.

The bright sunlight of the next morning was very exhilarating, and
though the doctor was disappointed in Spring Bank, he greeted his
bride-elect kindly, noticing, when he did so, how her cheeks alternately
paled, and then grew red, while she seemed to be chilly and cold. ’Lina
had passed a wretched night, tossing from side to side, bathing her
throbbing head and rubbing her aching limbs. The severe cold taken in
the wet yard was making itself visible, and she came to the
breakfast-table jaded wretched and sick, a striking contrast to Alice
Johnson, who seemed to the doctor more beautiful than ever. She was
unusually gay this morning, for while talking to Dr. Richards, whom she
had met in the parlor, she had, among other things concerning Snowdon,
said to him, casually, as it seemed, “Anna has a waiting-maid at last:
You saw her of course?”

Somehow the doctor fancied Alice wished him to say yes, and as a
falsehood was nothing for him, he replied at once, “Oh, yes, I saw her.
Her little boy is splendid.”

Alice was satisfied. The shadow lifted from her spirits. Dr. Richards
was not George Hastings. He was not the villain she had feared, and
’Lina might have him now. Poor ’Lina! Alice felt almost as if she had
done her a wrong by suspecting the doctor, and was very kind to her that
day. Poor ’Lina! we say it again, for hard, and wicked, and treacherous,
and unfilial, as she had ever been, she had need for pity on this her
wedding day. Retribution terrible and crushing, was at hand, hurrying on
in the carriage bringing Anna Richards to Spring Bank, and on the
fleet-footed steed bearing the convict swiftly up the Frankfort ‘pike.

Restless and impatient ’Lina wandered from room to room, stopping
longest in the one where lay the bridal dress, at which she gazed
wistfully, feeling almost as if it were her shroud. She could not tell
what ailed her. She only knew that she felt wretchedly, as if some
direful calamity were about to overtake her, and more than once her eyes
filled with tears as she wished her path to Dr. Richards’ name had been
marked with no deception. He was now in his room, and it was almost time
for her to dress. Lulu might begin to arrange her hair, and she called
her just as the mud-bespattered vehicle containing Anna Richards drove
up, Mr. Millbrook having purposely stopped in Versailles, thinking it
better that Anna should go on alone.

It was Ellen Tiffton, who was to come early, ’Lina said, and so the
dressing continued, and she was all unsuspicious of the scene enacting
below, in the room where Anna met her brother alone. She had not given
Hugh her name. She simply asked for Dr. Richards, and conducting her
into the parlor, hung with bridal decorations, Hugh went for the doctor,
saying, “a lady wished to see him.”

“A lady! Who is it?” the doctor asked, visions of his aggrieved mother,
in her black silk velvet, rising before his mind. “What could a lady and
a stranger want of him?”

Mechanically he took his way to the parlor, while Hugh resumed his seat
by the window, where for the last hour he had watched for the coming of
one who had said, “I will be there.”

Half an hour later, had he looked into the parlor, he would have seen a
frightened, white-faced man, crouching at Anna Richards’ side and
whispering to her as if all life, all strength, all power to act for
himself, were gone.

“What must I do? Tell me what to do.”

She had given him no time for questioning, but handing him Adah’s
letter, had bidden him read it through, as that would explain her
presence at Spring Bank. One glance at the handwriting, and the doctor
turned white as marble. “Could it be? Had Lily come back to life?” he
asked himself, and then eagerly, rapidly, he read the first two pages,
every word burning into his heart and bewildering his brain. But when he
came to the line, “_I am Lily, and Willie is your brother’s child_,”
sight and sense seemed failing him, and tottering to his sister, sternly
regarding him, he gasped, “Oh, Anna, read for me. I can’t see any
more—it runs together, and I—I’m going to faint!”

“_No, you are not._ You must not faint; you shall not,” Anna exclaimed,
shaking him energetically and applying to his nostrils the bottle of
strong hartshorn she had procured in Versailles for just such an
emergency as this.

The odor half strangled him, but Anna’s object was attained. He did not
faint, but sat like an idiotic thing, listening while she read the
letter through, and demanded if it were true. Was it Adah Gordon whom he
deserted, and was it a mock marriage? She would have the truth, and he
had no desire to conceal it.

“Yes, true—all true—but I thought she was dead. I did, Anna. Oh, Lily,
where is she now? I’m going to——”

“Sit down,” Anna said, imperatively; and with all the air of an imbecile
he crouched at her feet, asking what he should do.

This was a puzzle to Anna, and she replied by asking him another
question. “Do you love ’Lina Worthington?”

“I—I—no, I guess I don’t; but she’s rich, and——”

With a motion of disgust Anna cut him short, saying, “Don’t make me
despise you more than I do. Until your lips confessed it, I had faith
that Lily was mistaken, that your marriage was honorable, at least, even
if you tired of it afterward. You are worse than I supposed and now you
speak of money. What shall you do? Get up, and not sit whining at my
feet like a puppy. Find Lily, of course, and if she will stoop to listen
a second time to your suit, make her your wife, working to support her
until your hands are blistered, if need be.”

Anna hardly knew herself in this phase of her character, and her brother
certainly did not.

“Don’t be hard on me, Anna,” he said, “I’ll do what you say, only don’t
be hard. It’s come so sudden, that my head is like a whirlpool. Lily,
Willie, Willie. The child I saw, you mean—yes, the child—I—saw—did it
say he—was—_my_—boy?”

The words were thick and far apart. The head drooped lower and lower,
the color all left the lips, and in spite of Anna’s vigorous shakes, or
still more vigorous hartshorn, overtaxed nature gave way, and the doctor
fainted at last. It was Anna’s turn now to wonder what she should do,
and she was about summoning aid from some quarter when the door opened
suddenly, and Hugh ushered in a stranger—the convict, who had kept his
word, and came to tell what he knew of this complicated mystery. No one
had seen him as he entered the house but Hugh, who was expecting him,
and who, in reply to his inquiries for the doctor, told where he was,
and that a stranger was with him. There was a low, hurried conversation
between the two, a partial revelation of the business which had brought
Sullivan there, and at its close Hugh’s face was deadly white, for he
knew now that he had met Dr. Richards before, and that ’Lina could not
be his wife.

“The villain!” he muttered, involuntarily clenching his fist as if to
smite the dastard as he followed Sullivan into the parlor, starting back
when he saw the prostrate form upon the floor, and heard the lady say,
“My brother, sir, has fainted.”

She was Anna, then; and Hugh guessed rightly why she was there.

“Madame,” he began, but ere another word was uttered there fell upon his
ear a shriek which seemed to cleave the very air and made even the
fainting man move in his unconsciousness.

It was Mrs. Worthington who, with hands outstretched as if to keep him
off, stood upon the threshold, gazing in mute terror at the horror of
her life, whispering incoherently, “What is it, Hugh? How came he here?
Save me, save me from him!”

 A look, half of sorrow, half of contempt, flitted across the stranger’s
face as he answered for Hugh kindly, gently, “Is the very sight of me so
terrible to you, Eliza? Believe me, you have nothing to fear. I am only
here to set matters right—to make amends for the past, so far as
possible. Here for our daughter’s sake.”

He had drawn nearer to her as he said this last, but she intuitively
turned to Hugh, who started suddenly, growing white and faint as a
suspicion of the truth flashed upon him.

“Mother?” he began, interrogatively, winding his arm about her, for she
was the weaker of the two.

She knew what he would ask, and with her eye still upon the man who
fascinated her gaze, she answered, sadly, “Forgive me, Hugh, I thought
he was dead. The paper said so, with all the particulars. Forgive me. He
was—my husband; he is—’Lina’s father, not yours, Hugh, oh, Heaven be
praised, not yours!” and she clung closely to her boy, as if glad one
child, at least, was not tainted with the Murdoch blood.

The convict smiled bitterly, and said to Hugh himself,

“Your mother is right. She was once my wife, but the law set her free
from the galling chain. I have had a variety of names in my life; so
many, indeed, that I hardly knew which is my real one.”

He was perfectly cool, but his face showed the effort it was to be so,
while his black eyes rolled restlessly from one object to another, and
he was about to speak again when Alice came tripping down the stairs,
and pausing at the parlor door, looked in.

“Anna Richards!” she exclaimed, but uttered no other sound for the
terror of something terrible, which kept her silent.

It was no ordinary matter which had brought that group together, and she
stood looking from one to the other, until the convict said,

“Young lady, you cannot be the bride, but will you call her, tell her
she is wanted.”

Alice never knew what she said to ’Lina. She was only conscious of
following her down the stairs and into that dreadful room. Sullivan was
watching for her, and the muscles about his mouth twitched convulsively,
while a shadow of mingled pity and tenderness swept over his features as
his eye fell on the girlish figure behind her, ’Lina, with the orange
blossoms in her hair—’Lina almost ready for the bridal!

For an instant the convict regarded her intently, and there was
something in his glance which brought Hugh at once to ’Lina, where, with
his arm upon her chair, he stood as if he would protect her. Noble Hugh!
’Lina never knew one-half how good and generous he was until just as she
was losing him.

Dr. Richards was restored by this time, and looked on those around him
in utter astonishment; on Mrs. Worthington crouched in the farthest
corner, her face as white as ashes, and her eyes riveted upon the figure
of the man standing in the center of the room; on ’Lina, terrified at
what she saw; on Anna, more perplexed, more astonished than himself, and
on Hugh, towering up so commandingly above the whole, and demanding of
the convict the explanation which he had come to make.

There was a moment’s hesitancy, and his face flushed and paled
alternately ere the convict could summon courage to begin.

“Take this seat, sir, you need it,” Hugh said, bringing him a chair and
then resuming his watch over ’Lina, who involuntarily leaned her
throbbing head upon his arm, and with the others listened to that
strange tale of sin.

                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
                          THE CONVICT’S STORY.

“It is not an easy task to confess how bad one has been,” the stranger
said, “and once no power could have tempted me to do it; but several
years of prison life have taught me some wholesome lessons, and I am not
the same man I was when I met you, Eliza, (bowing to Mrs. Worthington)
and won your hand if not your heart. But previous to that time there was
a passage of my life which I must now repeat. At my boarding-house in
New York there was a young girl, a chamber-maid, whom I deceived with
promises of marriage and then deserted, just when she needed me the
most. I had found new prey, was on the eve of marriage with Mrs. Eliza
Worthington. I—”

The story was interrupted at this point by a cry from ’Lina, who moaned,

“No, no, oh no! He is not _my_ father; is he, Hugh? Tell me no. John,
Dr. Richards, pray look at me and say it’s all a dream, a dreadful
dream! Oh, Hugh!” and to the brother, scorned so often, poor ’Lina
turned for sympathy, while the stranger continued,

“It would be useless for me to say now that I loved the girl, for I did
not; but I felt sorry for her, and when six months after my marriage I
heard that I was a father I feigned an excuse and left my wife for a few
weeks. Eliza, you remember I said I had business in New York, and so I
had. I went to this young girl, finding her in a low, wretched garret,
with her baby in her arms, and a look on her face which told me she had
not long to live. I staid by her till she died, promising to care for
her child and mine. I had a mother then, a woman, old and infirm, and
good, even if I was her son. To her I went in my trouble, asking that
she would care for the helpless thing to which I gave the name Matilda.
Mother did not refuse, and leaving the baby in her charge I came back to
my lawful wife.

“In course of time there was a daughter born to me and to Eliza; a sweet
brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, whom we named _Adaline_.”

Instinctively, every one in that room glanced at the black eyes and hair
of ’Lina, marvelling at the change.

“I loved this little girl, as it was natural I should, more than I loved
the other, and after she was born I tried to be a better man, but could
not hold out long, and at last there came a separation. Eliza would not
live with me and I went away, but pined so for my child, that I
contrived to steal her, and carried her to my mother, where was the
other one.”

’Lina’s eyes were dark as midnight, while she listened breathlessly to
this mysterious page of her existence.

“My mother was very old and she died suddenly, leaving me alone with my
two girls. I could not attend to them both, and so I sent one to Eliza,
and kept the other myself, hiring a housekeeper, and because it suited
my fancy, passing as Mr. Redfield, guardian to the little child, whom I
loved so much.”

“That was _Adah_,” fell in a whisper from the doctor’s lips, but caught
the ear of no one.

All were too intent upon the story, which proceeded;

“She grew in beauty, and I was wondrous proud of her, giving her every
advantage in my power. I sent her to the best of schools, and even
looked forward to the day when she should take the position she was so
well fitted to fill. After she was grown to girlhood we boarded, she as
the ward, I as the guardian still, and then one unlucky day I stumbled
upon _you, Dr. John_, but not until you first had stumbled on my
daughter, and been charmed with her beauty, passing yourself as—as
George Hastings,— lest your fashionable associates should know how the
aristocratic Dr. Richards was in love with a poor, unknown orphan,
boarding up two flights of stairs.”

“Who is he talking about, Hugh? Does he mean me? My head throbs so, I
don’t quite understand,” ’Lina said piteously, while Hugh held the poor
aching head against his bosom, crushing the orange blossoms, and
whispering softly,

“He means Adah.”

“Yes, Adah,” the convict rejoined. “John Richards fancied Adah Gordon,
as she was called, but loved his pride and position more. I’ll do you
justice, though, young man, I believe at one time you really and truly
loved my child, and but for your mother’s letters might have married her
honorably. But you were afraid of that mother. Your pride was stronger
than your love; but I was determined that you should have my daughter,
and proposed a mock marriage——”

“Monster! _You, her father_, planned that fiendish act!” and Alice’s
blue eyes flashed indignantly upon him, while Hugh, forgetting that the
idea was not new to him, walked up before the “monster,” as if to lay
him at his feet.

“Listen, while I explain, and you will see the monster had an object,”
returned the stranger, speaking to Alice, instead of Hugh. “It was the
great wish of my heart that my daughter should marry into a good
family,—one which would give her position, and when I saw how much John
Richards was pleased with her, I said _he_ should be her husband, for
the Richards were known to me by reputation.

“From what I knew of John I thought he would hardly dare marry my
daughter outright, and so I cautiously suggested a mock marriage,
saying, by way of excusing myself that as I was only Adah’s guardian, I
could not feel towards her as a near relative would feel,—that, as I had
already expended large sums of money on her, I was getting tired of it,
and would be glad to be released, hinting, by way of smoothing the
fiendish proposition, my belief that, from constant association, he
would come to love her so much that at last he would really and truly
make her his wife. He seemed shocked, and if I remember rightly, called
me a brute, and all that; but little by little I gained ground, until at
last he consented, stipulating that she should not know his real name,
which he knew I had discovered. It seems strange that a father should
wish his child to marry one who would consent to act so base a part, but
I knew there was nothing unkind in the doctor’s nature, and I trusted
that his fondness for Adah and her influence over him would bring it
right at last.

“I had an acquaintance, I said, who lived a few miles from the city,—a
man who, for money, would do any anything, and who, as a feigned justice
of the peace, would go through with the ceremony, and ever after keep
his own counsel. I wonder the doctor himself did not make some inquiries
concerning this so called justice, but I think he is not remarkably
clear-headed, and this weakness saved me much trouble. After a time I
arranged the matter with my friend, who was a lawful justice, staying at
the house of his brother, then absent in Europe. This being done, I
decided upon _Hugh Worthington_, for a witness, as being the person of
all the world, who should be present at the bridal. He had recently come
to New York, and I had accidentally made his acquaintance, acquiring so
strong an influence over him that when I invited him to the wedding of
my _ward_, he went unsuspectingly, signing his name as witness and
saluting the bride, who really was a bride, as lawful a one as any who
ever turned from the altar where she had registered her vows.”

“Oh, joy, joy!” and Alice sprang at once to her feet, and hastening to
the doctor’s side, said to him, authoritatively:

“You hear, you understand, Adah is your wife, your very own, and you
must go back to her at once. You do understand me?” and Alice grew very
earnest as the doctor failed to rouse up, as she thought he ought to do.

Appealing next to Anna, she continued:

“Pray, make him comprehend that his wife is at Terrace Hill.”

Very gently Anna answered:

“She was there, but she has gone. He knows it; I came to tell him, but
she fled immediately after recognizing my brother, and left a letter
revealing the whole.”

It had come to ’Lina by this time that Dr. Richards could never be her
husband, and with a bitter cry, she covered her face with her hands, and
went shivering to the corner where Mrs. Worthington sat, as if a
mother’s sympathy were needed now, and coveted as it had never been
before.

“Oh, mother,” she sobbed, laying her head in Mrs. Worthington’s lap, “I
wish I had never been born.”

Sadly her wail of disappointment rang through the room, and then the
convict went on with his interrupted narrative.

“When the marriage was over, _Mr. Hastings_ took his wife to another
part of the city, hiding her from his fashionable associates, staying
with her most of the time, and appearing to love her so much that I
thought it would not be long before I should venture to tell him the
truth. It would be better to write it, I thought, and so I left her with
him while I went South on—the very laudable business of stealing negroes
from one State and selling them in another. At Cincinnati, I wrote to
the doctor, confessing the whole, but it seems my letter never reached
him, for, though I did not know it then, the car containing that mail
was burned, and my letter was burned with it. Some of you know that I
was caught in my traffic, and that the negro stealer, Sullivan, was
safely lodged in prison, from which he was released but a day since.
Fearing there might be some mistake, I wrote from my prison home to Adah
herself, but suppose it did not reach New York till after she had left
it.”

A casual observer would have said that Mrs. Worthington had heard less
of that strange story than anyone else, so motionless she sat, but not a
word was missed by her in the entire narrative, and when the narrator
concluded, she said anxiously,

“And that child, the lawful wife of this young man, was she mine, or was
she the servant girl’s?”

A little apart from the others, his arms folded tightly together, and
his eyes fixed upon the convict, stood Hugh.

“Answer her,” he said, gravely, as the convict did not reply. “Tell her
if Adah be her child, or,——_’Lina_,——which?”

Had a clap of thunder cleft the air around her, ’Lina could not have
started up sooner than she did. It was the _very first suspicion_ which
had crossed her brain, and her life seemed dying out, as half way
between Mrs. Worthington and the convict she stood with hands
outstretched and livid lips, which tried to speak, but could only moan
convulsively. The convict took his eyes away from _her_, pitying her so
much, as he said, “_Adah_ is my lawful child. I kept her, and sent the
other back. It was a bold act, and I wonder it was not questioned, but
Adaline’s eyes were not so black then as they are now, and though five
months older than the other, she was small for her age, and two years
sometimes change a child materially; so Eliza took it for granted that
the girl she received as Adaline, and whose real name was Matilda, was
her own; but Adah Hastings is _her_ daughter and Hugh’s half sister
while this young woman is—the child of myself and the servant girl.”

Alice, Anna, and the doctor looked aghast, while Mrs. Worthington
murmured audibly, “Adah, darling Adah, and Willie, precious Willie—oh, I
want them here now!”

The mother had claimed her own, but alas, the fond cry of welcome to
sweet Adah Hastings was a death knell to ’Lina, for it seemed to shut
her out of that gentle woman’s heart. There was no place for her, and in
her terrible desolation she stood alone, her eyes wandering wistfully
from one to another, but turning very quickly when they fell on the
convict, her father. She would not have it so; she could not own a
servant for her mother, that villain for her father, and worse—oh,
infinitely worse than all—she had no right to be born! A child of sin
and shame, disgraced, disowned, forsaken. It was a terrible blow, and
the proud girl staggered beneath it.

“Will no one speak to me?” she said, at last; “no one break this
dreadful silence? Has everybody forsaken me? Do you all loathe and hate
the offspring of such parents? Won’t somebody pity and care for me?”

“_Yes, ’Lina_,” and _Hugh_—the one from whom she had the least right to
expect pity—Hugh came to her side; and winding his arm around her, said,
with a choking voice, “_I_ will not forsake you, ’Lina; I will care for
you the same as ever, and so long as I have a home you shall have one
too.”

“Oh, Hugh, I don’t deserve this from you!” was ’Lina’s faint response,
as she laid her head upon his bosom, whispering, “Take me away—from them
all—up stairs—on the bed! I am so sick, and my head is bursting open!”

Hugh was strong as a young giant, and lifting gently the yielding form,
he bore it from the room—the bridal room, which she would never enter
again, until he brought her back—and laid her softly down beneath the
windows, dropping tears upon her white, still face, and whispering,

“Poor ’Lina!”

As Hugh passed out with his burden in his arms, the bewildered company
seemed to rally; but the convict was the first to act. Turning to Mrs.
Worthington, still shivering in the corner, he said,

“Eliza, you see I did _not_ die as that paper told you, but it suited me
then to be _dead_, and so I wrote the paragraph myself, sending you the
paper. For this you should thank me, as it made a few years of your life
happier, thinking I was dead. I have come here to-night for my
children’s sake; and now that I have done what I came to do, I shall
leave you, only asking that you continue to be a mother to the poor girl
who is really the only sufferer. The rest have cause for joy; you in
particular,” turning to the doctor. “But tell me again what was that I
heard of Adah’s having fled?”

Anna repeated the story, and then conquering her repugnance of the man,
asked if he would not immediately seek for her and bring her back if
possible.

“My brother will help you,” she said, “when he recovers himself,” and
she turned to the doctor, who suddenly seemed to break the spell which
had bound him, and springing to his feet, exclaimed,

“Yes, Lily shall be found, but I must see my boy first. Anna, can’t we
go now, to-night?”

That was impossible; Anna was too tired, Alice said, and conducting her
to her own room, she made her take the rest she so much needed.

When Alice returned again to the parlor, the convict had gone. There had
been a short consultation between himself and the doctor, an engagement
to meet in Cincinnati to arrange their plan of search; and then he had
turned again to his once wife, still sitting in her corner, motionless,
white, and paralyzed with nervous terror.

“You need not fear me, Eliza,” he said, kindly; “I shall probably never
trouble you again; and though you have no cause to believe my word, I
tell you solemnly that I will never rest until I have found our
daughter, and sent her back to you. Good-bye, Eliza, good-bye.”

He did not offer her his hand; he knew she would not touch it; but with
one farewell look of contrition and regret, he left her, and mounting
the horse which had brought him there, dashed away from Spring Bank,
just as Colonel Tiffton reined up to the gate.

It was Alice who met him in the hall, explaining to him as much as she
thought necessary, and asking him, on his return, to wait a little by
the field gate, and turn back other guests who might be on the road.

The Colonel promised compliance with her request, and as only a few had
been invited, it was not a hard task imposed upon him. ’Lina had been
taken very sick, was all the excuse the discreet Colonel would give to
the people, who rather reluctantly turned their faces homeward, so that
Spring Bank was not honored with wedding guests that night; and when the
clock struck eight, the appointed hour for the bridal, only the
bridegroom sat in the dreary parlor, his head bent down upon the sofa
arm, and his chest heaving with the sobs he could not repress as he
thought of all poor Lily had suffered since he left her so cruelly. Hugh
had told him what he did not understand before. He had come into the
room for his mother, whom ’Lina was pleading to see; and after leading
her to the chamber of the half-delirious girl, he had returned to the
doctor, and related to him all he knew of Adah, dwelling long upon her
gentleness and beauty, which had won from him a brother’s love, even
though he knew not she was his sister.

“I was a wretch, a villain!” the doctor groaned. Then looking wistfully
at Hugh, he said, “Do you think she loves me still? Listen to what she
says in her farewell to Anna,” and with faltering voice, he read: “That
killed the love; and now, if I could, I would not be his except for
Willie’s sake. Do you think she meant it?”

“I have no doubt of it, sir. How could her love out live everything?
Curses and blows might not have killed it, but when you thought to ruin
her good name, to deny your child, she would be less than woman could
she forgive. Why, I hate and despise you myself for the wrong you have
done _my sister_,” and Hugh’s tall form seemed to take on an increased
height as he abruptly left the room, lest his hot temper should get the
mastery, and he knock-down his dastardly brother-in-law.

It was a sad house at Spring Bank that night, where ’Lina lay, tossing
distractedly from side to side; now holding her throbbing head, and now
thrusting out her hot, dry hands, as if to keep off some fancied form,
who claimed to be her mother.

The shock had been a terrible one to ’Lina. She did love Dr. Richards;
and the losing him was enough of itself to drive her mad; but worse even
than this, and far more humiliating to her pride, was the discovery of
her parentage, the knowing that a convict was her father, a common
servant her mother, and that no marriage tie had hallowed her birth.

“Oh, I can’t bear it!” she cried. “I can’t. I wish I might die! Will
nobody kill me? Hugh, you will, I know!”

But Hugh was away for the family physician, for he would not trust a
gossipping servant to do the errand. Once before that doctor had stood
by ’Lina’s bedside, and felt her feverish pulse, but his face then was
not as anxious as now, when he counted the rapidly increasing beats, and
saw how fast the fever came on. There had been an exposure to cold, he
said, sufficient of itself to induce a fever, but the whole had been
aggravated a hundred fold by the late disastrous affair, of which Hugh
had told him something. He did not speak of danger, but Hugh, who
watched him narrowly, read it in his face, and following him down the
stairs, asked to be told the truth.

“She is going to be very sick. She may get well, but I have little to
hope from symptoms like hers.”

That was the doctor’s reply, and with a sigh Hugh went back to the sick
girl, who had given him little else than sarcasm and scorn.

                             CHAPTER XXXIV.
                              POOR ’LINA.

Drearily the morning dawned, but there were no bridal slumbers to be
broken, no bridal farewells said. There were indeed good-byes to be
spoken, for Anna was impatient to be gone, and at an early hour she was
ready to leave the house she had entered under so unpleasant
circumstances.

“I would like to see ’Lina,” she said to Alice, who carried the request
to the sick room.

But ’Lina refused. “I can’t,” she said; “she hates, she despises me, and
she had reason. Tell her I was not worthy to be her sister; tell her
anything you like; but the doctor—oh, Alice, do you think he’ll come,
just for a minute, before he goes?”

It was not a pleasant thing for the doctor to meet ’Lina now face to
face, for he thought she wished to reproach him for his treachery. But
she did not—she thought only of herself; and when at last, urged on by
Anna and Alice, he entered in to her presence, she only offered him her
hand at first without a single word. He was shocked to find her so sick,
for a few hours had worked a marvellous change in her, and he shrank
from the bright eyes fixed so eagerly on his face.

“Oh, Dr. Richards,” she began at last, “if I loved you less it would not
be so hard to tell you what I must. I did love you, bad as I am, but I
meant to deceive you. It was for me that Adah kept silence at Terrace
Hill. Adah, I almost hate her for having crossed my path.”

There was a fearfully vindictive gleam in the bright eyes now, and the
doctor shudderingly looked away, while ’Lina, with a softer tone
continued, “You believed me rich, and whether you loved me afterward or
not, you sought me first for my money. I kept up the delusion, for in no
other way could I have won you. Dr. Richards, if I die, as perhaps I
may, I shall have one less sin for which to atone, if I confess to you
that instead of the heiress you imagined me to be, I had scarcely money
enough to pay my board at that hotel. Hugh, who himself is poor,
furnished what means I had, and most of my jewelry was borrowed. Do you
hear that? Do you know what you have escaped?”

She almost shrieked at the last, for she read his feelings in his face,
and knew that he despised her.

“Go,” she continued, “find your Adah. It’s nothing but Adah now. I see
her name in everything. Hugh thinks of nothing else, and why should he?
She’s his sister, and _I_—oh! I’m nobody but a beggarly servant’s brat.
I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead, and I will be pretty soon.”

This was their parting, and the doctor left her room a sobered, sadder
man than he had entered it. Half an hour later, and he, with Anna, was
fast nearing Versailles, where they were joined by Mr. Millbrook, and
together the three started on their homeward route.

Rapidly the tidings flew, told in a thousand different ways, and the
neighborhood was all on fire with the strange gossip. But little cared
they at Spring Bank for the storm outside. So fierce a one was beating
at their doors, that even the fall of Sumter failed to elicit more than
a casual remark from Hugh, who read without the slightest emotion the
President’s call for 75,000 men. At another time he might have been
eager to join the fray and hasten to avenge the insult, for Kentucky
held no truer patriot than he, but now all his thoughts were centered in
that dark room where ’Lina raved in mad delirium, controlled only by his
or Alice’s voice, and quiet only when one of them was with her. Tenderer
than a brother was Hugh to the raving creature, staying by her so
patiently and uncomplainingly that none save Alice ever guessed how he
longed to be free and join in the search for Adah, which had as yet
proved fruitless. Night after night, day after day, ’Lina grew worse,
until at last there was no hope, and the council of physicians summoned
to her side, said that she would die. Still she lingered on, and the
fever abated at last, the eyes were not so fearfully bright, while the
wild ravings were hushed, and ’Lina lay quietly upon her pillow.

“Do you know me?” Alice asked, bending gently over her, while Hugh, from
the other side of the bed, leaned eagerly forward for the reply.

“Yes, but where am I? This is not New York. Have I—am I sick, very
sick?” and ’Lina’s eyes took a terrified expression as she read the
truth in Alice’s face. “I am not going to _die_, am I?” she continued,
casting upon Alice a look which would have wrung out the truth, even if
Alice had been disposed to withhold it, which she was not.

“You are very sick,” she answered, “and though we hope for the best, the
doctor does not encourage us much. Are you willing to die, ’Lina?”

Neither Hugh nor Alice ever forgot the tone of ’Lina’s voice as she
replied,

“Willing? _No!_” or the expression of her face, as she turned it to the
wall, and motioned them to leave her.

For two days after that she neither spoke nor gave other token of
interest in any thing passing around her, but at the expiration of that
time, as Alice sat by her, she suddenly exclaimed,

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I wish he had said that some other way, for if that means we can not be
forgiven until we forgive every body, there’s no hope for me, for I
cannot, _I will not_ forgive that servant for being my mother, neither
will I forgive Adah Hastings for having crossed my path. If she had
never seen the doctor I should have been his wife, and never have know
who or what I was. I hate them both, so you need not pray for me. I
heard you last night, but it’s no use. I can’t forgive.”

’Lina was very much excited—so much so, indeed, that Alice could not
talk with her then; and for days this was the burden of her remarks. She
could not forgive her mother nor Adah, and until she did, there was no
use for her or any one else to pray. But the prayers she could not say
for herself were said for her by others, while Alice omitted no proper
occasion for talking with her personally on the subject she felt to be
all important. Nor were these efforts without their effect, for the
bitter tone ceased at last, and ’Lina became gentle as a child.

Taking Mrs. Worthington’s hand one day, she said,

“I’ve given you little cause to love me, and I know how glad you must be
that another, and not I, is your real daughter. I did not know what made
me so bad, but I understand it now. I saw myself so plainly in that
man’s eyes; it was his nature in me which made me a second Satan—so bad
to you, so hateful to Hugh. Oh, Hugh! the memory of what I’ve been to
him is the hardest part of all, for I want him to think kindly of me
when I’m gone!” and covering her face with the sheet, ’Lina wept
bitterly; while Hugh, who was standing behind her laid his warm hand on
her head, smoothing her hair caressingly, as he said,

“Never mind that, ’Lina; I, too, was bad to you—provoking you purposely
many times, and exposing your weakness just to see how savage you would
be. If ’Lina can forgive _me_, I surely can forgive ’Lina.”

There was the sound of convulsive sobbing; and then, uncovering her
face, ’Lina raised herself up, and laying her head on Hugh’s bosom,
answered through her tears,

“I wish I had always felt as I do now. We should have been happier
together, and it would not be so great a relief to you’all to have me
gone, never to come back again. Hugh, you don’t know how bad I’ve been.
You remember the money you sent to Adah last summer in mother’s letter.
I kept the whole. I burned the letter, and mother never saw it. I bought
jewelry with Adah’s money. I did so many things, I—I—it goes from me
now. I can’t remember all. Oh, must I confess the whole, everything,
before I can say, ‘Forgive us our trespasses?’”

“No, ’Lina. Unless you can repair some wrong, you are not bound to tell
every little thing. Confession is due to God alone,” Alice whispered to
the agitated girl, who looked bewildered, as she answered back, “But God
knows all now, and you do not; besides, I can’t feel sorry towards Him
as I do towards others. I try and try, but the feeling is not there—the
sorry feeling, I mean, as sorry as I want to feel.”

“God, who knows our feebleness, accepts our purpose to do better, and
gives us strength to carry them out,” Alice whispered, again bending
over ’Lina, on whose pallid, distressed face a ray of hope for a moment
shone.

“I have good purposes,” she murmured, “but I can’t, I can’t. I don’t
know as they are real; may be, if I get well, they would not last, and
it’s all so dark, so desolate,—nothing to make life desirable,—no home,
no name, no friends—and death is so terrible. Oh, Hugh, Hugh! don’t let
me go. You are strong; you can hold me back, even from Death himself,
and I can be good to you; I can feel on that point, and I tell you truly
that, standing as I am with the world behind and death before, I see
nothing to make life desirable, but you, Hugh, my noble, my abused
brother. To make you love me, as I hope I might, is worth living for.
You would stand by me, Hugh,—you if no one else, and I wish I could tell
you how fast the great throbs of love keep coming to my heart. Dear
Hugh, brother Hugh, don’t let me die,—hold me fast.”

With an icy shiver, she clung closer to Hugh, as if he could indeed do
battle with the king of terrors stealing slowly into that room.

“Somebody say ‘Our Father,’” she whispered, “I can’t remember how it
goes.”

“Do you forgive and love everybody?” Alice asked, sighing as she saw the
bitter expression flash for an instant over the pinched features, while
the white lips answered, “Not Adah, no, not Adah.”

Alice could not pray after that, not aloud at least, and a deep silence
fell upon the group assembled around the death-bed, while ’Lina slept
quietly on Hugh’s strong arm. Gradually the hard expression on the face
relaxed, giving way to one of quiet peace, as they waited anxiously for
the close of that long sleep. It was broken at last, but ’Lina seemed
lost to all save the thoughts burning at her breast,—thoughts which
brought a quiver to her lips, and forced out upon her brow great drops
of sweat. The noonday sun of May was shining broadly into the room, but
to ’Lina it was night, and she said to Alice, now kneeling at her side,
“It’s growing dark; they’ll light the street lamps pretty soon, and the
band will play in the yard, but I shall not hear them. New York and
Saratoga are a great ways off, and so is Terrace Hill. Tell Adah I _do_
forgive her, and I would like to see her, for she is my half sister. The
bitter is all gone. I am in charity with everybody, everybody. May I say
‘Our Father’ now? It goes and comes, goes and comes, forgive our
trespasses, my trespasses; how is it, Hugh? Say it with me once, and
you, too, mother.”

Mrs. Worthington, with a low cry began with Hugh the soothing prayer in
which ’Lina joined feebly, throwing in ejaculatory sentences of her own.
“Forgive my trespasses as I forgive those that trespass against me.
Bless Hugh, dear Hugh, noble Hugh. Forgive us our trespasses, forgive us
our trespasses, our trespasses, forgive _my_ trespasses, _me_, forgive,
forgive.”

It was the last words which ever passed ’Lina’s lips, “Forgive,
forgive,” and Hugh, with his ear close to the lips, heard the faint
murmur even after the hands had fallen from his neck where, in the last
struggle, they had been clasped, and after the look which comes but once
to all had settled on her face. That was the last of ’Lina, with that
cry for pardon she passed away, and though it was but a death-bed
repentance, and she, the departed, had much need for pardon, Alice clung
to it as to a ray of hope, knowing how tender and full of compassion was
the blessed Saviour, even to those who turn not to him until the river
of death is bearing them away. Very gently Hugh laid the dead girl back
upon the pillow, and leaving one kiss on her white forehead, hurried
away to his own room, where, unseen by mortal eye, he could ask for
knowledge to give himself to the God who had come so near to them.

The next day was appointed for the funeral, and just as the sun was
setting, a long procession wound across the fields, and out to the
hillside, where the Spring Bank dead were buried, and where they laid
’Lina to rest, forgetting all her faults, and speaking only kindly words
of her as they went slowly back to the house, from which she had gone
forever.

                             CHAPTER XXXV.
                           JOINING THE ARMY.

Ten days after the burial, there came three letters to Spring Bank, one
to Hugh, from Murdoch, as he now chose to be called, saying that though
he had sought and was still searching for the missing Adah, he could
only trace her, and that but vaguely, to the Greenbush depot, where he
lost sight of her entirely, no one after that having seen a person
bearing the least resemblance to her. After a consultation with the
doctor, he had advertised for her, and he enclosed a copy of the
advertisement, as it appeared in the different papers of Boston, Albany,
and New York.

  “If A—— H—— will let her whereabouts be known to her friends, she will
  hear of something to her advantage.”

This was the purport of Murdoch’s letter, if we except a kind enquiry
after _’Lina_, of whose death he had not heard.

The second, for Alice, was from Anna Richards, who having heard of
’Lina’s decease, spoke kindly of the unfortunate girl, and then wrote.
“I have great hopes of my erring brother, now that I know how his whole
heart goes out towards his beautiful boy, our darling Willie. I wish
poor, dear Lily could have seen him when, on his arrival at Terrace
Hill, he knelt by the crib of his sleeping child, waking him at once,
and hugging him to his bosom, while his tears dropped like rain. I am
sure she would have chosen to be his wife, for her own sake as well as
Willie’s.

“You knew how proud my mother and sisters are, and it would surprise you
to see them pet, and spoil, and fondle Willie, who rules the entire
household; mother even allowing him to bring wheel-barrow, drum, and
trumpet into the parlor, declaring that she likes the noise, as it stirs
up her blood. Willie has made a vast change in our once quiet home, and
I fear I shall meet with much opposition when I take him away, as I
expect to do next month, for Lily gave him to me, and brother John has
said that I may have him until the mother is found, while Charlie is
perfectly willing; and thus, you see, my cup of joy is full.

“Brother is away now, searching for Adah, and I am wicked enough not to
miss him, so busy am I in the few preparations needed by the wife of a
poor missionary.”

Then, in a postscript, Anna added: “I forgot to tell you that Charlie
and I are to be married some time in July, that the Presbyterian Society
of Snowdon have given him a call to be their pastor, that he has
accepted, and what is best of all, has actually rented your old home for
us to live in. Oh, I am so happy; I do not feel like an old maid of
thirty-three, and Charlie flatters me by saying I have certainly gone
back in looks to twenty. Perhaps I have, but it all comes of happiness
and a heart full of thankfulness to our good Father who has so greatly
blessed me.”

With a smile, Alice finished the childlike letter, so much like Anna.
Then feeling that Mrs. Worthington would be glad to hear from Willie,
she went in quest of her, finding her at the end of the long piazza,
listening while Hugh read the sympathetic letter received from Irving
Stanley.

From the doctor, whom he accidentally met on Broadway, Irving had heard
of ’Lina’s death, and he wrote at once to Mrs. Worthington, expressing
his sympathy for her own and Hugh’s bereavement; thus showing that the
Dr. had only told him a part of the sad story, withholding all that
concerned Adah, who was evidently a stranger to Irving Stanley. His
sister, Mrs. Ellsworth, was well, he wrote, though very busy with her
preparations for going to Europe, whither he intended accompanying her,
adding “it was not so much pleasure which was taking her there, as the
hope that by some of the Paris physicians her little deformed Jennie
might be benefitted. She had secured a gem of a governess for her
daughter, a young lady whom he had not yet seen, but over whose beauty
and accomplishments his staid sister Carrie had really waxed eloquent.”
The letter closed by asking if Hugh were still at home or had he joined
the army.

“Oh-h,” and Alice’s cheek grew pale at the very idea of Hugh’s putting
himself in so much danger, for Hugh was very dear to her now. His noble,
unselfish devotion to ’Lina had finished the work begun on that
memorable night when she had said to him, “I may learn to love you,” and
more than once as she watched with him by ’Lina’s bedside, she had been
tempted to wind her arm around his neck and whisper in his ear,

“Hugh, I love you now, I will be your wife.”

But propriety had held her back and made her far more reserved towards
him than she had ever been before. Terribly jealous where she was
concerned, Hugh was quick to notice the change, and the gloomy shadow on
his face was not caused wholly by ’Lina’s sad death, as many had
supposed. Hugh was very unhappy. Instead of learning to love him, as he
had sometimes hoped she might, Alice had come to dislike him, shunning
his society, and always making some pretense to get away if by chance
they were left alone, or if compelled to talk with him, chatting rapidly
on the most indifferent topics. She never would love him, Hugh thought,
and feeling that the sooner he left home the better, he had decided to
start at once in quest of Adah. This decision he had not yet
communicated to his mother, but as the closing of Irving Stanley’s
letter seemed to open the way, he rather abruptly announced his
intention of going immediately to New York. He did not however add that
failing to find his sister, he might possibly join the Federal Army.

Ever since he had had time to think clearly upon the subject then
agitating the public mind, Hugh had felt an intense desire to enroll
himself with the patriotic men who would not sit idly down while their
country was laying her dishonored head low in the dust. A Unionist to
the heart’s core, he had already won some notoriety by his bitter
denunciations against those men who, with Harney at their head, were
advocating secession from the union. But his first duty was to Adah, and
so he only talked of her and the probabilities of his finding her. He
should start to-morrow, if possible, he said. He had made his
arrangements to do so, and there was no longer an excuse for tarrying.
They would get on well enough without him; they would not miss him much,
and he stole a glance at Alice, who, fearful lest she might betray
herself, framed some excuse for leaving her seat upon the piazza, and
stole up to her room where she could be alone, to think how desolate
Spring Bank would be when Hugh was really gone.

Once she thought to tell him all, thinking that a perfect understanding
would make her so much happier while he was away, but maidenly modesty
kept her back, and so the words which would have brought so much comfort
to Hugh were to the last unspoken. Gentler, kinder, tenderer than a
sister’s could have been, was her demeanor towards him during the whole
of the next day, the last he spent at home. Once, emboldened by
something she said, Hugh felt half tempted to sue again for the love so
coveted, but depreciation of himself kept him silent, and when at last
they parted, his manner towards her was so constrained and cold that
even Mrs. Worthington observed it, wondering what had come between them.
She wanted Alice to think well of Hugh, and by way of obliterating any
unpleasant impression he might have left in her mind, she spent the
morning after his departure in talking of him, telling how kind he had
always been to her, and how kind he was to every body. Many acts were
enumerated by the fond mother as proofs of his unselfishness, and among
others she spoke of his heroic conduct years ago, when with his uncle he
was on Lake Erie and the boat took fire. Had she never told Alice?

“No, never,” Alice answered faintly, a new light breaking in upon her
and showing her why it was that Hugh’s face had so often puzzled her.

_He_ was the boy to whose care she had entrusted her life, and _she_ was
the _Golden Haired_, remembered by him so long and so lovingly. There
was one great throb of joy,—of perfect delight, and then an intense
desire to tell Hugh of her discovery——.

But Hugh was gone, and her only alternative now was to write. He was
intending to stop two days in Cincinnati, and he had said to his mother,
“If any thing happens you can write to me there,” and something had
happened, something which made her heart throb wildly, as alone in her
room she knelt and thanked her God, asking that he would care for the
Hugh so dear to her, and bring him safely back.

Two days later and Hugh, who had but an hour longer to remain in
Cincinnati, sauntered to the post-office, with very little expectations
that he should find any thing awaiting him. How then was he surprised
when a clerk handed him Alice’s letter, the sixth she had written ere at
all satisfied with its wording. Hurrying back to his room at the hotel,
he broke the seal, and read as follows.

  “DEAR HUGH:—I have at last discovered _who_ you are, and why I have so
  often been puzzled with your face. You are the boy whom I met on the
  St. Helena, and who rescued me from drowning. Why have you never told
  me this?

  “Dear Hugh, I wish I had known it earlier. It seems so cold, thanking
  you on paper, but I have no other opportunity, and must do it here.

  “We were both unconscious when taken from the water, but you were
  holding fast to my arm, and so really was the means of my being saved,
  though a fisherman carried me to the shore. You must have been removed
  at once, for when we inquired for you we could only learn that you
  were gone. Heaven bless you, Hugh. My mother prayed often for the
  preserver of her child, and need I tell you that I, too, shall never
  forget to pray for you? The Lord keep you in all your ways, and lead
  you safely to your sister,

                                                                 ALICE.”

Many times Hugh read this note, then pressing it to his lips thrust it
into his bosom, but failed to see what Alice had hoped he might see,
that the love he once asked for was his at last.

“If she loved me, she would have told me so,” he thought, “for she
promised me as much, but she does not, so that ends the drama. Oh,
Golden Hair, why _did_ I ever meet her, or why was I suffered to love
her so devotedly, if I must lose her at the last!”

There were great drops of sweat about Hugh’s lips, and on his forehead,
as, burying his face in his hands, he laid both upon the table, and
battled manfully with his love for Alice Johnson.

“God help me in my sorrow,” was the prayer which fell from the quivering
lips, but did not break the silence of that little room, where none,
save God, witnessed the conflict, the last Hugh ever fought for Alice
Johnson.

He _could_ give her up at length; could think, without a shudder, of
living all his life without her, and when, late that afternoon, he took
the evening train for Cleveland, not one in the crowded car would have
guessed how sore was the heart of the young man who plunged so
energetically into the spirited war argument in progress between a
Northern and Southern politician. It was a splendid escape-valve for his
pent up feelings, and Hugh carried everything before him, taking by
turns both sides of the question, and effectually silencing the two
combatants, who said to each other in parting, “We shall hear from that
Kentuckian again, though whether in Rebeldom or Yankee land we cannot
tell.”

Arrived at New York he wrote a reply to Alice’s note, saying that what
he had done for her was no more than he ought to have done for any one
who had come to him for help, and that she need not expend her gratitude
on him, though he was glad of any thing to keep him in her remembrance.

After this he wrote regularly, kind, friendly letters, and Alice was
beginning to feel that they in some degree atoned for his absence, when
there came one which wrung a wailing cry from Mrs. Worthington, and
brought Alice at once to her side.

“What is it?” she asked in much alarm, and Mrs. Worthington replied,
“Oh, Hugh, my boy! he’s enlisted, joined the army! I shall never see him
again!”

Could Hugh have seen Alice then, he would not for a moment have doubted
the nature of her feelings towards himself. She did not cry out, nor
faint, but her face turned white as the dress she wore, while her hands
pressed so tightly together, that her nails left the impress in her
flesh.

“God keep him from danger and death,” she murmured; then, winding her
arm around the stricken mother, she wiped her tears away; and to her
moaning cry that she was left alone, replied, “Let me be your child till
he returns, or, if he never does——”

She could get no further, and sinking down beside Hugh’s mother, she
laid her head on her lap, and wept bitterly. Alas, that scenes like this
should be so common in our once happy land, but so it is. Mothers start
with terror, and grow faint over the boy just enlisted for the war; then
follow him with prayers and yearning love to the distant battle field;
then wait and watch for tidings from him; and then too often read with
streaming eyes and hearts swelling with agony, the fatal message which
says _their boy is dead_.

It was a sad day at Spring Bank when first the news of Hugh’s enlistment
came, for Hugh seemed as really dead as if they heard the hissing shell
or whizzing ball which was to bear his young life away. It was nearly
two months since he left home, and he could find no trace of Adah,
though searching faithfully for her, in conjunction with Murdoch and Dr.
Richards, both of whom had joined him in New York.

“If Murdoch cannot find her,” he wrote, “I am convinced no one can, and
I leave the matter now to him, feeling that another duty calls me, the
duty of fighting for my country.”

It was just after the disastrous battle of Bull Run, when people were
wild with excitement, and Hugh was thus borne with the tide, until he
found himself enrolled as a private in a regiment of cavalry, gathering
in one of the Northern States. There had been an instant’s hesitation, a
clinging of the heart to the dear old home at Spring Bank, where his
mother and Alice were; and then, with an eagerness which made his whole
frame tremble, he had seized the pen, and written down his name, amid
deafening cheers for the brave Kentuckian. This done, there was no
turning back; nor did he desire it. It seemed as if he were made for
war, so eagerly he longed to join the fray. Only one thing was wanting,
and that was _Rocket_. He had tried the “Yankee horses,” as he called
them, but found them far inferior to his pet. Rocket, he must have, and
in his letter to his mother, he made arrangements for her to send him
northward by a Versailles merchant, who he knew, was coming to New York.

Hugh and Rocket, they would make a splendid match, and so Alice thought,
as, on the day when Rocket was led away, she stood with her arms around
his graceful neck, whispering to him the words of love she would fain
have sent his master. She had recovered from the first shock of Hugh’s
enlistment. She could think of him now calmly as a soldier; could pray
that God would keep him, and even feel a throb of pride that one who had
lived so many years in Kentucky, then poising almost equally in the
scale, should come out so bravely for the right, though by that act he
called down curses on his head from those at home who favored Rebellion,
and who, if they fought at all, would cast in their lot with the
seceding States. She had written to Hugh telling him how proud she was
of him, and how her sympathy and prayers would follow him everywhere.
“And if,” she had added, in concluding, “you are sick, or wounded, I
will come to you as a sister might do. I will find you wherever you
are.”

She had sent this letter to him three weeks before, and now she stood
caressing the beautiful Rocket, who sometimes proudly arched his long
neck, and then looked wistfully at the sad group gathered round him, as
if he knew it was no ordinary parting. Col. Tiffton, who had heard what
was going on, had ridden over to expostulate with Mrs. Worthington
against sending Rocket North. “Better keep him at home,” he said, “and
tell Hugh to come back, and let those who had raised the muss settle
their own difficulty.”

The old colonel, who was a native of Virginia, did not know exactly
where he stood. “He was very patriotic,” he said, “but hanged if he knew
which side to take—both were wrong. He didn’t go Nell’s doctrine, for
Nell was a _rabid Secesh_; neither did he swallow Abe Lincoln, and he’d
advise Alice to keep a little more quiet, for there was no knowing what
the hot heads would do; they might pounce on Spring Bank any night.”

“Let them,” and Alice’s blue eyes flashed brightly while her girlish
figure seemed to expand and grow higher as she continued; “they will
find no cowards here. I never touched a revolver in my life. I am quite
as much afraid of one that is not loaded as of one that is, but I’ll
conquer the weakness. I’ll begin to-day. I’ll learn to handle fire-arms.
I’ll practice shooting at a mark, and if Hugh is killed I’ll——”

She could not tell what she would do, for the woman conquered all other
feelings, and laying her face on Rocket’s silken mane, she sobbed aloud.

“There’s pluck, by George!” muttered the old colonel. “I most wish Nell
was that way of thinking.”

It was time now for Rocket to go, and ‘mid the deafening howls of the
negroes and the tears of Mrs. Worthington and Alice he was led away, the
latter watching him until he was lost to sight beyond the distant hill,
then falling on her knees she prayed, as many a one has done, that God
would be with our brave soldiers, giving them the victory, and keeping
_one_ of them, at least, from falling.

Sadly, gloomily the autumn days came on, and the land was rife with war
and rumors of war. In the vicinity of Spring Bank were many patriots,
but there were hot Secessionists there also, and bitter contentions
ensued. Old friends were estranged, families were divided, neighbors
watched each other jealously, while all seemed waiting anxiously for the
result.

Blacker, and darker, and thicker the war clouds gathered on our horizon,
but our story has little to do with that first year of carnage, when
human blood was poured as freely as water, from the Cumberland to the
Potomac. Over all that we pass, and open the scene again in the summer
of ‘62, when people were gradually waking to the fact that Richmond was
_not_ so easily taken, or the South so easily conquered.

                             CHAPTER XXXVI.
                             THE DESERTER.

There had been a desertion from a regiment on the Potomac. An officer of
inferior rank, but whose position had been such as to make him the
possessor of much valuable information, was missing from his command one
morning, and under such circumstances as to leave little doubt that his
intention was to reach the enemy’s lines if possible. Long and loud were
the invectives against the traitor, and none were deeper in their
denunciations than Captain Hugh Worthington, as, seated on his fiery
war-horse, Rocket, he heard from Irving Stanley the story of _Dr.
Richards’_ disgrace.

“He should be pursued, brought back, and shot!” he said, emphatically,
feeling that he would like much to be one of the pursuers already on the
track of the treacherous doctor, who skillfully eluded them all, and
just at the close of a warm summer day, sat in the shadow of the
Virginia woods, weary, foot-sore and faint with the pain caused from his
ankle, sprained by a recent fall.

He had hunted for Adah until entirely discouraged, and partly as a
panacea for the remorse preying so constantly upon him, and partly in
compliance with Anna’s entreaties, he had at last joined the Federal
army, and been sworn in with the full expectation of some lucrative
office. But his unlucky star was in the ascendant. Stories derogatory to
his character were set afloat, and the final result of the whole was
that he found himself enrolled in a company where he knew he was
disliked, and under a captain whom he thoroughly detested, for the fraud
practised upon himself. In this condition he was sent to the Potomac,
and while on duty as a picket, grew to be on the most friendly terms
with more than one of the enemy, planning at last to desert, and
effecting his escape one stormy night, when the watch were off their
guard. Owing to some mistake, the aid promised by his Rebel friends had
not been extended, and as best he could he was making his way to
Richmond, when, worn out with hunger and fatigue, he sank down to die,
as he believed, at the entrance of some beautiful woods which skirted
the borders of a well kept farm in Virginia. Before him, at the distance
of nearly a quarter of a mile, a large, handsome house was visible, and
by the wreath of smoke curling from the rear chimney, he knew it was
inhabited, and thought once to go there, and beg for the food he craved
so terribly. But fear kept him back—the people might be Unionists, and
might detain him a prisoner until the officers upon his track came up.
Dr. Richards was cowardly, and so with a groan, he laid his head upon
the grass, and half wished that he had died ere he came to be the
miserable wretch he was. The pain in his ankle was by this time
intolerable, and the limb was swelling so fast that to walk on the
morrow was impossible, and if he found a shelter at all, it must be
found that night.

Midway between himself and the house was a comfortable looking barn,
whither he resolved to go. But the journey was a tedious one, and
brought to his flushed forehead great drops of sweat wrung out by the
agony it caused him to step upon his foot. At last, when he could bear
his weight upon it no longer, he sank upon the ground, and crawling
slowly upon his hands and knees, reached the barn just as it was growing
dark, and the shadows creeping into the corners made him half shrink
with terror, lest they were the bayonets of those whose coming he was
constantly expecting. He could not climb to the scaffolding, and so he
sought a friendly pile of hay, and crouching down behind it, fell asleep
for the first time in three long days and nights.

The early June sun was just shining through the cracks between the
boards when he awoke: sore, stiff, feverish, burning with thirst, and
utterly unable to use the poor, swollen foot, which lay so helplessly
upon the hay.

“Oh, for Anna now,” he moaned; “if she were only here; or Lily, she
_would_ pity and forgive, could she see me now.”

But hark, what sound is it which falls upon his ear, making him quake
with fear, and, in spite of his aching ankle, creep farther behind the
hay! It is a footstep—a light, tripping step, and it comes that way,
nearer, nearer, until a shadow falls between the open chinks and the
bright sunshine without. Then it moves on, round the corner, pausing for
a moment, while the hidden coward holds his breath and listens
anxiously, hoping nothing is coming there. But there is, and it enters
the same door through which he came the previous night—a girlish figure,
with a basket on its arm—a basket in which she puts the eggs she knew
just where to find. Not behind the hay, where a poor wretch was almost
dead with terror. There was no nest there, and so she failed to see the
ghastly face, pinched with hunger and pain, the glassy eyes, the
uncombed hair, and soiled, tattered garments of him who once was known
as one of fashion’s most fastidious dandies.

She had secured her eggs for the morning meal, and the doctor hoped she
was about to leave, when there was a rustling of the hay, and he almost
uttered a scream of fear. But the sound died on his lips, as he heard
the voice of prayer—heard that young girl as she prayed, and the words
she uttered, stopped, for an instant, the pulsation of his heart, and
partly took his senses away. First for her baby-boy she prayed, asking
that God would be to him father and mother both, and keep him from
temptation. Then for her _country_; and the doctor, listening to her,
knew it was no Rebel tongue calling so earnestly on God to save the
Union, praying so touchingly for the poor, suffering soldiers, and
coming at last to him, the miserable outcast, whose bloodshot eyes grew
blind, and whose brain grew giddy and wild, as he heard again _Lily’s
voice_, pleading for _George_, wherever he might be. She did not say,
“God send him back to me, who loves him still.” She only asked
forgiveness for the father of her boy, but this was proof to the
listener that she did not hate him, and forgetful of his pain he raised
himself upon his elbow, and looking over the pile of hay, saw her where
she knelt, Lily,—Adah,—his wife, her fair face covered by her hands, and
her soft, brown hair cut short, and curling in her neck.

Twice he essayed to speak, but his tongue refused to move, and he sunk
back exhausted, just as Adah rose from her knees and turned to leave the
barn. He could not let her go. He should die before she came again; he
was half dying now, and it would be so sweet to breathe out his life
upon her bosom, with perhaps her forgiving kiss upon his lips.

“Adah!” he tried to say; but the quivering lips made no sound, and Adah
passed out, leaving him there alone. “Adah, Lily, Anna,” he gasped,
hardly knowing himself whose name he called in his despair.

She heard that sound, and started suddenly, for she thought it was her
old, familiar name, which no one knew there at Sunny Mead. For a moment
she paused; but it came not again, and so she turned the corner, and her
shadow fell a second time on the haggard face pressed against that
crevice in the wall, the opening large enough to thrust the long fingers
through, in the wild hope of detaining her as she passed.

“_Adah!_”

It was a gasping, bitter cry; but it reached her, and looking back, she
saw the pale hand beckoning, the fingers motioning feebly, as if begging
her to return. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then conquering her
timidity, Adah went back, shuddering as she passed the still beckoning
hand, and caught a glimpse of the wild eyes peering at her through the
crevice.

“Adah!”

She heard it distinctly now, and with it came thoughts of Hugh. It must
be he; and her feet scarcely touched the ground in her eagerness to find
him. Over the threshold, across the floor, and behind the hay she
bounded; out stood aghast at the spectacle before her. He had struggled
to his knees; and with his sprained limb coiled under him, his ashen
lips apart, and his arms stretched out, he was waiting for her. But Adah
did not spring into those trembling arms, as once she would have done.
She would never willingly rest in their embrace again; and utter,
overwhelming surprise, was the only emotion visible on her face as she
recognized him, not so much by his looks as by the name he gave her.

“George, oh, George, how came you here?” she asked, drawing backward
from the arm reached out to touch her.

He felt that he was repulsed, and, with a wail which smote painfully on
Adah’s heart, he fell forward on his face, sobbing, “Oh, Adah, Lily,
pity me, pity me, if you can’t forgive! I have slept for three nights in
the woods, without once tasting food! My ankle is sprained, my strength
is gone, and I wish that I were dead!”

She had drawn nearer to him while he spoke, near enough to recognize her
country’s uniform, all soiled and tattered though it was. He was a
soldier then—Liberty’s loyal son—and that fact awoke a throb of pity.

“George,” she said, kneeling down beside him, and laying her hand upon
his ragged coat, “tell me how came you here, and where is your company?”

He would not deceive her, though tempted to do so, and he answered her
truthfully, “Lily, I am a deserter. I am trying to join the enemy!”

He did not see the indignant flash of her eyes, or the look of scorn
upon her face, but he felt the reproach her silence implied, and dared
not look up.

“George,” she began at last, sternly, very sternly, “but for Him who
bade us forgive seventy times seven, I should feel inclined to leave you
here to die; but when I remember how much He is tried with me, I feel
that I am to be no one’s judge. Tell me, why you have deserted; and tell
me, too—oh, George, in mercy—tell me if you know aught of _Willie_?”

The mother had forgotten all the wrongs heaped upon the wife, and Adah
drew nearer to him now, _so_ near indeed, that his arm encircled her at
last, and held her close; but the ragged, dirty, fallen creature did not
dare to kiss her, and could only press her convulsively to his breast,
as he attempted an answer to her question.

“You must be quick,” she said, suddenly remembering herself; “it is
growing late, Mrs. Ellsworth will be waiting for her breakfast; and
since the stampede of her servants, two old negroes and myself are all
there are left to care for the house. Stay,” she added, as a new thought
seemed to strike her; “I must go, or they will look for me; but after
breakfast I will return, and do for you what I can. Lie down again upon
the hay.”

She spoke kindly to him, but he felt it was as she would have spoken to
any one in distress, and not as once she had addressed him. But he knew
that he deserved it; and he suffered her to leave him, watching her with
streaming eyes as she hurried along the path, and counting the minutes,
which seemed to him like hours, ere he saw her returning. She was very
white when she came back and he noticed that she frequently glanced
toward the house, as if haunted by some terror. Constantly expecting
detection, he grasped her arm, as she bent to bathe his swollen foot,
and whispered huskily, “Adah, there’s something on your mind—some evil
you fear. Tell me, is any one after me!”

Adah nodded; while, like a frightened child, the tall man clung to her
neck, saying, piteously, “Don’t give me up! Don’t tell; they would hang
me, perhaps!”

“They ought to do so,” trembled on Adah’s lips, but she suppressed the
words, and went on bandaging up the ankle, and handling it as carefully
as if it had not belonged to a deserter.

He did not feel pain now in his anxiety, as he asked, “Who is it, Adah?
who’s after me?” but he started when she replied, with downcast eyes and
a flush upon her cheek, “Major Irving Stanley. You were in his
regiment,—the N. Y. Volunteers.”

Dr. Richards drew a relieved breath. “I’d rather it were he than Captain
Worthington, who hates me so cordially. Adah, you must hide me; I have
so much to tell. I know your parents, your brother, your husband; and I
am he. It was not a mock marriage. It has been proved real. It was a
genuine Justice who married us, and you are my lawful wife. Oh, pray,
please don’t hurt me so,” and he uttered a scream of pain as Adah’s
hands pressed heavily upon the hard, purple flesh.

She scarcely knew what she was doing as she listened to his words, and
heard that she was indeed his wife. Two years before, such news would
have overwhelmed her with delight, but now for a single instant a fierce
and almost resentful pang shot through her heart as she thought of being
bound for life to one for whom she had no love, and whose very caresses
made her loathe him more and more. But when she thought of Willie, and
that the stain upon his birth was washed away, the hard look left her
eyes, and her hot tears dropped upon the ankle she was bandaging.

“You are glad?” he asked, looking at her curiously, for her manner
puzzled him.

“Yes, very glad for Willie,” she replied, keeping her face bent down so
he could not see its expression.

Then when her task was done, she seemed to nerve herself for some
painful task, and sitting down upon the hay said to him,

“Tell me now all that has happened since I left Terrace Hill; but first
of Willie. You say Anna has him?”

“Yes, Anna—Mrs. Millbrook,” he replied, and was about to say more, when
Adah interrupted him with,

“It may spare you some pain if I tell you first what I know of the
tragedy at Spring Bank. I know that _’Lina_ is dead, and that the fact
of my existence prevented the marriage. So much I heard Mrs. Ellsworth
tell her brother. I had just come to her then. She was prouder toward me
than she is now, and I dared not question her. Go on, you spoke of my
parents, my brother. Who are they?”

Her manner perplexed him greatly, but he controlled himself, while he
repeated rapidly the story known already to our readers, the story which
made Adah reel, and turn so white that he attempted to reach her and so
keep her from falling. But just the touch of his hand had power to rouse
her, and drawing back she laid her face in the hay, and moaned.

“It’s more than I ever hoped. Oh, Heavenly Father accept my thanks for
this great happiness. A mother and a brother found.”

“And husband, too,” chimed in the doctor, eagerly, “thank him for me,
Adah. You are glad to find me?”

There was a pleading in his tone—earnest pleading, for the terrible
conviction was fastening itself upon him, that not as they once parted
had he and Adah met. For full five minutes Adah lay upon the hay, her
whole soul going out in a prayer of thankfulness for her great joy, and
for strength to bear the bitterness mingling with her joy. Her face was
very white when she lifted it up at last, but her manner was composed,
and she questioned the doctor calmly of Spring Bank, of Alice, of Hugh,
of Anna, but could not trust herself to say much to him of Willie, lest
her calmness should give way, and a feeling spring up in her heart of
something like affection for Willie’s father. Alas, for the miserable
man. He had found his wife, but there was between them a gulf which his
own act had built, and which he never more might pass. He began to
suspect it, and ere she had finished the story of her wanderings, which
at his request she told, he knew there was no pulsation of her heart
which beat for him. He asked her where she had been since she fled from
Terrace Hill, and how she came to be in Mrs. Ellsworth’s family.

There was a moment’s hesitancy, as if she was deciding how much to tell
him of the past, and then resolving to keep nothing back which he might
know, she told him how, with a stunned heart and giddy brain, she had
gone to Albany, and mingling with the crowd had mechanically followed
them down to a boat just starting for New York. That, by some means, she
found herself in the saloon, and seated next to a feeble, deformed
little girl, who lay upon the sofa, and whose sweet, childish voice said
to her pityingly,

“Does your head ache, lady, or what makes you so white?”

She had responded to that appeal, talking kindly to the little girl,
between whom and herself the friendliest of relations were established,
and whose name, she learned, was Jenny Ellsworth. The mother she did not
then see, as during the journey down the river she was suffering from a
nervous headache, and kept her room. From the child and child’s nurse,
however, she heard that Mrs. Ellsworth was going to Europe, and was
anxious to secure some competent person to act in the capacity of
Jenny’s governess. Instantly Adah’s decision was made. Once in New York
she would by letter apply for the situation, for nothing then could so
well suit her state of mind as a tour to Europe, where she would be far
away from all she had ever known. Very adroitly she ascertained Mrs.
Ellsworth’s address, wrote her a note the day following her arrival in
New York, and the day following that, found her in Mrs. Ellsworth’s
parlor at the Brevoort House, where for a few days she was stopping. It
had troubled her somewhat to know what name to take, but she decided
finally upon Adah Gordon as the one by which she was known ere George
Hastings crossed her path, and in her note to Mrs. Ellsworth she signed
herself “A GORDON.” From her little girl Mrs. Ellsworth had heard much
of the “sweet young lady, who was so kind to her on the boat,” and was
thus already prepossessed in her favor.

Adah did not tell Dr. Richards, and perhaps she did not herself know how
surprised and delighted Mrs. Ellsworth was with the fair, girlish
creature, announced to her as Miss Gordon, and who won her heart before
five minutes were gone, making her think it of no consequence to inquire
concerning her at Madam ——’s school, where she said she had once been a
pupil.

Naturally very impulsive and unsuspecting, Mrs. Ellsworth usually acted
upon her likes or dislikes, and Adah was soon installed as governess to
the delighted little Jennie, who learned to love her gentle teacher with
a love almost amounting to idolatry.

“You were in Europe, then, and that is the reason why we could not find
you,” Dr. Richards said, adding, after a moment, “And Irving Stanley
went with you—was your companion all the while?”

“Yes, all the while,” and Adah’s cold fingers worked nervously at the
wisp of hay she was twisting in her hand. “We came home sooner than we
intended, as he was anxious to join the army. I had seen him before—he
was in the cars when Willie and I were on our way to Terrace Hill.
Willie had the ear-ache, and he was so kind to us both.”

Adah looked fixedly now at the craven doctor, who could not meet her
glance, for well he remembered the dastardly part he had played in that
scene, where his own child was screaming with pain, and he sat selfishly
idle.

“She don’t know I was there, though,” he thought, and that gave him some
comfort.

But Adah did know, and she meant he should know she did. Keeping her
eyes still fixed upon him, she continued,

“I heard Mr. Stanley talking of you once to his sister, and among other
things he spoke of your dislike for children, and referred to an
occasion in the cars, when a little boy, for whom his heart ached, was
suffering acutely and for whom you evinced no interest, except to say
that you _hated_ children, and to push his feet from your lap. I never
knew till then that you were so near to me.”

“It’s true, it’s true,” the doctor cried, tears rolling down his soiled
face; “but I never guessed it was you. Lily, I supposed it some ordinary
woman.”

“So did Irving Stanley,” was Adah’s quiet, cutting answer; “but his
heart was open to sympathy, even for an ordinary woman.”

The doctor could only moan, with his face still hidden in his hands,
until a sudden thought like a revelation flashed upon him, and
forgetting his wounded foot, he sprang like a tiger to the spot where
Adah sat, and winding his arm firmly around her, whispered hoarsely,

“Adah, you _love Irving Stanley_. My wife loves another than her
husband.”

Adah did not struggle to release herself from his grasp, but her whole
soul loathed that close embrace, and the loathing expressed itself in
the tone of her voice, as she replied,

“Until within an hour I did not suppose you were my husband. You said
you were not in that letter; I have it yet; the one in which you told me
it was a mock marriage, as, by your own confession, it seems you meant
it should be.”

“Oh, darling, you kill me, yet I deserve it all; but Adah, I have
suffered enough to atone for the dreadful past; and I tried so hard to
find you. Forgive me, Lily, forgive,” and falling again on his knees,
the wretched man poured forth a torrent of entreaties for her
forgiveness, her love, without which he should die.

Holding fast her cold hands, he pleaded with all his eloquence, until,
maddened by her silence, he even taunted her with loving another, while
her own husband was living.

Then Adah started, and pushing him away, sprang to her feet, while the
hot blood stained her face and neck, and a resentful fire gleamed from
her brown eyes.

“It is not well for you to reproach me with faithlessness,” she said,
“you, who have dealt so treacherously by me; you, who deliberately
planned my ruin, and would have effected it but for the deeper-laid
scheme of one you say is my father. No thanks to you that I am a lawful
wife. You did not make me so of your own free will. You did to me the
greatest wrong a man can do a woman, then cruelly deserted me, and now
you would chide me for respecting another more than I do you.”

“Not respecting him, Adah, no, not for respecting him. You should do
that. He’s worthier than I; but, oh, Adah, Lily, wife, mother of my boy,
do you love Irving Stanley?”

He was sobbing bitterly, and the words came between the sobs, while he
tried to clutch her dress. Staggering backward against the wooden beam,
Adah leaned there for support, while she replied,

“You would not understand if I should tell you the terrible struggle it
was for me to be thrown each day in the society of one as noble, as good
as Irving Stanley, and not come at last to feel for him as a poor
governess ought never to feel for the handsome, gifted brother of her
employer. Oh, George, I prayed against it so much, prayed to be kept
from the sin, if it were a sin, to have Irving Stanley mingled with
every thought. But the more I prayed, the more the temptation seemed
thrust upon me. The kinder, gentler, more attentive, grew his manners
toward me. He never treated me as a mere governess. It was more like an
equal at first, and then like a younger sister, so that few strangers
took me for a subordinate, so kind were both Mrs. Ellsworth and her
brother.”

“And he,” the doctor gasped, looking wistfully in her face, “does he—do
you think he loves _you_?”

Adah colored crimson, but answered frankly,

“He never told me so; never said to me a word which a husband should not
hear; but—sometimes, I’ve left him abruptly lest he should speak, for
that I knew would bring the crisis I so dreaded. I must tell him the
whole then, and by my dread of doing this, I knew he was more than a
friend to me. I was fearful at first that he might recognize me, but I
was much thinner than when I saw him in the cars, while my hair,
purposely worn short, and curling in my neck, changed my looks
materially, so that he only wondered whom I was so much like, but never
suspected the truth.”

There was silence, a moment, and then the doctor asked, “How is all this
to end?”

The question brought into Adah’s eyes a fearful look of anguish, but she
did not answer, and the doctor spoke again.

“Have I found Lily only to lose her?”

Still there was no reply, and the doctor continued, “You are my wife,
Adah. No power can undo that, save death, and you are my child’s mother.
For Willie’s sake, oh Adah, for Willie’s sake, forgive.”

When he appealed to her as his wife, Adah seemed turning into stone; but
the mention of Willie, touched the mother, and the iceberg melted at
once.

“For Willie, my boy,” she gasped, “I could do almost anything; I could
_die_ so willingly, but—but—oh, George, that ever we should come to
this. You a deserter, a traitor to your country—lame, disabled, wholly
in my power, and begging of _me_, your outcast wife, for the love which
surely is dead—dead. No, George, I do forgive, but never, never more can
I be to you a wife.”

There was a rising resentment now in the doctor’s manner, as he answered
reproachfully: “Then surrender me at once to the lover hunting for me.
Let him take me back where I can be shot, and that will leave you free.”

Adah raised her hand deprecatingly, and when he had finished, rejoined:
“You mistake Maj. Stanley, if you think he would marry me, knowing what
I should tell him. It’s not for him that I refuse. It’s for myself. I
could not bear it. I—”

“Stay, Adah, Lily, don’t say you should hate me;” and the doctor’s voice
was so full of anguish that Adah involuntarily advanced toward him,
standing quite near, while he begged of her to say if the past could not
be forgotten. His family were anxious to receive her. Sweet Anna
Millbrook already loved her as a sister, while he, her husband, words
could not tell his love for her. He would do whatever she required; go
back to the Federal army if she said so; seek for the pardon he was sure
to gain; fight for his country like a hero, periling life and limb, if
she would only give him the shadow of a hope.

“I must have time to think. I cannot decide alone,” Adah answered, while
the doctor clutched her dress, half shrieking with terror,

“You surely will not consult Major Stanley?”

“No,” and Adah spoke reverently, “there’s a mightier friend than he. One
who has never failed me in my need. He will tell me what to do.”

The doctor knew now what she meant, and with a moan he laid his head
again upon the hay, wishing, so much that the lessons taught him when in
that little attic chamber, years ago, he knelt by Adah’s side, and said
with her, “Our Father,” had not been all forgotten. When he lifted up
his face again, Adah was gone, but he knew she would return, and waited
patiently while just outside the door, with her fair face buried in the
sweet Virginia grass, and the warm summer sunshine falling softly upon
her, poor half-crazed Adah fought and won the fiercest battle _she_ had
ever known, coming off conqueror over self, and feeling sure that God
had heard her earnest cry for help, and told her what to do. There was
no wavering now; her step was firm; her voice steady, as she went back
to the doctor’s side, and bending over him, said,

“I will nurse you, till you are well; then you must go back whence you
came, confess your fault, rejoin your regiment, and by your faithfulness
wipe out the stain of desertion. Then, when the war is over, or you are
honorably discharged, I will—be your wife. I may not love you at first
as once I did, but I shall try, and He, who counsels me to tell you this
will help me, I am sure.”

It was almost pitiful now to see the doctor, as he crouched at Adah’s
feet, kissing her hands and blessing her ‘mid his tears. “He would be
worthy of her, and they should yet be so happy.”

Adah suffered him to caress her for a moment, and then told him she must
go, for Mrs. Ellsworth would wonder at her long absence, and possibly
institute a search. Pressing one more kiss upon her hand the doctor
crept back to his hiding place, while Adah went slowly back to the house
where she knew Irving Stanley was anxiously waiting for her. She dared
not meet him alone now, for latterly each time they had so met, she had
kept at bay the declaration trembling on his lips, and which must never
be listened to. So she staid away from the pleasant parlor where all the
morning he sat chatting with his sister, who guessed how much he loved
the beautiful and accomplished girl, her daughter’s governess.

Right-minded and high-principled, Mrs. Ellsworth had conquered any pride
she might at first have felt—any reluctance to her brother’s marrying
her governess, and now like him was anxious to have it settled. But Adah
gave him no chance that day, and late in the afternoon he rode back to
his regiment wondering at the change in Miss Gordon, and why her face
was so deadly white, and her voice so husky, as she bade him good-bye.

Poor Adah! Hers was now a path of suffering, such as she had never known
before. But she did her duty to the doctor, nursing him with the utmost
care; but never expressing to him the affection she did not feel. It was
impossible to keep his presence there a secret from the two old negroes,
and knowing she could trust them, she told them of the wounded Union
soldier, enlisting their sympathies for him, and thus procuring for him
the care of older and more experienced people than herself.

He was able at length to return, and one pleasant summer night, just
three weeks after his arrival at Sunnymead, Adah walked with him to the
woods, and kneeling with him by a running stream, whose waters farther
away would yet be crimson with the blood of our slaughtered brothers,
she commended him to God. Through the leafy branches the moon-beams were
shining, and they showed to Adah the expression of the doctor’s wasted
face, as he said to her at parting, “I have kissed you many times, my
darling, but you have never returned it. Please do so once, for the sake
of the olden time. It will make me a better soldier.”

She kissed him once for the sake of the olden time, and when he
whispered, “Again for Willie’s sake,” she kissed him twice, and then she
bade him leave her, herself buttoning about him the soldier coat which
her own hands had cleaned and mended and made respectable. She was glad
afterward that she had done so; glad, too, that she had kissed him and
waited by the tree, where, looking backward, he could see the flutter of
her white dress until a turn in the forest path hid her from his view.

                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
                     THE SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN.

The second disastrous battle of Bull Run was over, and the shadow of a
summer night wrapped the field of carnage in darkness. Thickly upon the
battle field lay the dead and dying, the sharp, bitter cries of the
latter rising on the night wind, and adding tenfold to the horror of the
scene. In the woods, not very far away, more than one brave soldier was
weltering in his life-blood, just where, in his rapid flight, he had
fallen, the grass his pillow, and the leafy branches of the forest trees
his only covering.

Near to a running brook one wounded man was supporting another and
trying to staunch the purple gore, pouring darkly from a fearful bullet
wound in the region of the heart. The stronger of the two, he who wore a
major’s uniform, had come accidentally upon the other, writhing in
agony, and muttering at intervals snatches of the prayer with which he
once had been familiar, and which seemed to bring _Lily_ back to him
again, just as she was when in the attic chamber she made him kneel by
her, and say “Our Father.” He tried to say it now, and the whispered
words caught the ear of Irving Stanley, arresting his steps at once.

“Poor fellow! it’s gone hard with you,” he said, kneeling by the
sufferer, whom he recognized as the deserter _Dr. Richards_, who had
returned to his allegiance, had craved forgiveness for his sins, and
been restored to the ranks, discharging his duties faithfully, and
fighting that day with a zeal and energy which did much in reinstating
him in the good opinion of those who witnessed his daring bravery.

But the doctor’s work was done, and never from his lips would Lily know
how well his promise had been kept. Giddy with pain and weak from the
loss of blood, he had groped his way through the woods, fighting back
the horrid certainty that to-morrow’s sun would not rise for him, and
sinking at length exhausted upon the grass, whose freshness was now
defaced by the blood which poured so freely from his wound.

It was thus that Irving Stanley found him, starting at first as from a
hissing shell, and involuntarily clasping his hand over the place where
lay a little note, received a few days before, a reply to the earnest
declaration of love he had at last written to his sister’s governess.
There was but one alternative, and Adah met it resolutely, though every
fibre of her heart throbbed with keen agony as she told to Irving
Stanley the story of her life. She was a wife, a mother, the sister of
Hugh Worthington, they said, _the Adah_ for whom Dr. Richards had sought
so long in vain, and for whom Murdoch, the wicked father, was seeking
still for aught she knew to the contrary. Even the story of the doctor’s
secretion in the barn at Sunnymead was confessed. Nothing was withheld
except the fact that even as he professed to love her, so she in turn
loved him, or had done so before she knew it was a sin. Surprise had,
for a few moments stifled every other emotion, and Irving Stanley sat
like one suddenly bereft of life, when he read who Adah was. Then came
the bitter thought that he had lost her, mingled with a deep feeling of
resentment towards the man who had so cruelly wronged the gentle girl,
and who alone stood between him and happiness. For Irving Stanley could
overlook all the rest. His great warm heart, so full of kindly sympathy
and generous charity for all mankind could take to its embrace the fair
sweet woman he had learned to love so much, and be a father to her
little boy, as if it had been his own. But this might not be. There was
a mighty obstacle in the way, and feeling that it mattered little now
whether he ever came from the field alive, Irving Stanley, with a
whispered prayer for strength to bear and do right, had hidden the
letter in his bosom, and then, when the hour of conflict came, plunged
into the thickest of the fight with a fearlessness born of keen and
recent disappointment, which made life less valuable than it had been
before.

It is not strange, then, that he should start and stagger backward when
he came so suddenly upon the doctor, or that the first impulse of weak
human nature was to leave the fallen man; but the second, the Christian
impulse, bade him stay, and forgetting his own slight but painful wound,
he bent over Adah’s husband, and did what he could to alleviate the
anguish he saw was so hard to bear. At the sound of his voice, a spasm
of pain passed over the doctor’s pallid face, and the flash of a sudden
fire gleamed for a moment in his eye, as he, too, remembered _Adah_, and
thought of what might be when the grass was growing over his untimely
grave.

The doctor knew that he was dying, and yet his first question was—

“Do you think I can live? Did any one ever recover with such a wound as
this?”

Eagerly the dim eyes sought the face above them, the kind, good face of
one who would not deceive him. Irving shook his head as he felt the
pulse, and answered frankly,

“I believe you will die.”

There was a bitter moan, as all his misspent life came up before him,
followed closely by the dark future, where there shone no ray of hope,
and then with the desperate thought, “It’s too late now for regrets.
I’ll meet it like a man,” he said.

“It may as well be I as any one, though it’s hard even for me to die;
harder than you imagine;” then, growing excited as he talked, he raised
himself upon his elbow, and continued, “Major Stanley, tell me truly, do
you love the woman you know as Adah Gordon?”

“I did love her before I knew I must not—but now—I—yes, Dr. Richards, my
heart tells me that never was she so dear to me as now when her husband
lies dying at my side.”

Irving Stanley hardly knew what he was saying, but the doctor
understood, and almost shrieked out the words,

“You know then that she is Adah, a wife, a mother and that I am her
lawful husband?”

“I know the whole,” was the reply, as with his hand Irving dipped water
from the brook and laved the feverish brow of the dying man, who went on
to speak of Adah as she was when he first knew her, and of the few happy
months spent with her in those humble lodgings.

“You don’t know my darling,” he whispered. “She’s an angel, and I might
have been so happy with her. Oh, if I _could_ only live, but that can’t
be now, and it is well. Come close to me, Major Stanley, and listen
while I tell you that Adah promised if I would do my duty to my country
faithfully, she would live with me again, and all the while she
promised, her heart was breaking, for she did not love me. It had all
died out for me. It had been given to another; can you guess to whom?”

Irving made no reply, except to chafe the hands which clasped his so
tightly, and the doctor continued,

“I am surely dying—I shall never see her more, or my beautiful boy. I
was a brute in the cars; you remember the time. That was Adah, and those
little feet resting on my lap were Willie’s, baby Willie’s, Adah’s
baby.”

The doctor’s mind was wandering now, and he kept on disconnectedly,

“She’s been to Europe with him. She’s changed from the shy girl into a
queenly woman. Even the Richards line might be proud of her bearing, and
when I’m gone, tell her I said you might have Willie, and—and—it grows
very dark; the noise of the battle drowns my voice, but come nearer to
me, nearer—tell her—tell Adah, you may have her. She needn’t mourn, nor
wait; but carry me back to Snowdon. There’s no soldier’s grave there
yet. I never thought mine would be the first. Anna will cry, and mother
and Asenath and Eudora; but Adah, oh Lily, darling. She’s coming to me
now. Don’t you hear that rustle in the grass?” and the doctor listened
intently to a sound which also caught Irving’s ear, a sound of a horse’s
neigh in the distance, followed by a tramp of feet.

“Hush-sh,” he whispered. “It may be the enemy,” but his words were not
regarded, or understood.

The doctor was in Lily’s presence, and in fancy it was _her_ hand, not
Irving’s which wiped the death-sweat from his brow, and he murmured
words of love and fond endearment, as to a living, breathing form.
Fainter and fainter grew the pulse, weaker and weaker grew the trembling
voice, until at last Irving could only comprehend that some one was
bidden to pray—to say “Our Father.”

Reverently, as for a departing brother, he prayed over the dying man,
asking that all the past might be forgiven, and that the erring might
rest at last in peace.

“Say Amen for me, I’m too weak,” the doctor whispered; then, as reason
asserted her sway again, he continued “I see it now; Lily’s gone, and I
am dying here in the woods, in the dark, in the night, on the ground;
cared for by you who will be Lily’s husband. You may, you may, tell her
I said so; tell her kiss my boy; love him, Major Stanley; love him as
your own, even though others shall call you father. Tell her—I tried—to
pray—”

He never spoke again; and when next the thick, black, clotted blood
oozed up from the gaping wound, it brought with it all there was of
life; and there in those Virginia woods, in the darkness of the night,
Irving Stanley sat alone with the dead. And yet not alone, for away to
his right, and where the neigh of a horse had been heard, another
wounded soldier lay—his soft, brown locks moist with dew, and his
captain’s uniform wet with the blood which dripped from the terrible
gash in the fleshy part of the neck, where a murderous ball had been.
One arm, the right one, was broken, and lay disabled upon the grass;
while the hand of the other clutched occasionally at the damp grass, and
then lifting itself, stroked caressingly the powerful limbs of the
faithful creature standing guard over the prostrate form of his master.

Hugh and Rocket! They had been in many battles, and neither shot nor
shell had harmed them until to-day, when Hugh had received the charge
which sent him reeling from his horse, breaking his arm in the fall, and
scarcely conscious that two of his comrades were leading him from the
field. How or by what means he afterwards reached the woods, he did not
know, but reached them he had, and unable to travel further, he had
fallen to the ground, where he lay, until Rocket came galloping near,
riderless, frightened, and looking for his master. With a cry of joy the
noble brute answered that master’s faint whistle, bounding at once to
his side, and by many mute but meaning signs, signifying his desire that
Hugh should mount as heretofore.

But Hugh was too weak for that, and after several ineffectual efforts to
rise, fell back half fainting on the turf; while Rocket took his stand
directly over him, a powerful and efficient guard until help from some
quarter should arrive. Patiently, faithfully he stood, waiting as
quietly as if he knew that aid was coming, not far away, in the form of
an old man, whose hair was white as snow, and whose steps were feeble
with age, but who had the advantage of knowing every inch of that
ground, for he had trodden it many a time, with a homesick heart which
pined for “old Kentuck,” whence he had been stolen.

_Uncle Sam!_ He it was whose uncertain steps made Rocket prick up his
ears and listen, neighing at last a neigh of welcome, by which he, too,
was recognized.

“De dear Father be praised if that be’nt Rocket hisself. I’ve found him,
I’ve found my Massah Hugh. I tole Miss Ellis I should, ’case I knows all
de way. Dear Massah Hugh, I’se _Sam_, I is,” and with a convulsive sob
the old negro knelt beside the white-faced man who, but for this timely
aid, could hardly have survived that fearful night.

                            CHAPTER XXXVIII.
                             HUGH AND SAM.

It is more than a year now since last we looked in upon the inmates of
Spring Bank, and during that time Kentucky had been the scene of
violence, murder, and bloodshed. The roar of artillery had been heard
upon its hills. Soldiers wearing the Federal uniform had marched up and
down its beaten paths, encamping for a brief season in its capital, and
then departing to other points where their services were needed more.

Morgan, with his fierce band of guerillas, had carried terror, dismay,
and sometimes death, to many a peaceful home; while _Harney_, too,
disdaining open, honorable warfare, had joined himself, it was said, to
a horde of savage marauders, gathered, some from Texas, some from
Mississippi, and a few from Tennessee; but none, to her credit be it
said, none from Kentucky, save their chief, the _Rebel Harney_, who,
despised and dreaded almost equally by Unionists and Confederates, kept
the country between Louisville and Lexington in a constant state of
excitement.

As the storm grew blacker, it had seemed necessary for Colonel Tiffton
openly to avow his sentiments, and not “sneak between two fires, for
fear of being burned,” as Harney wolfishly told him one day, taunting
him with being a “villainous Yankee,” and hinting darkly of the
punishment preparing for all such.

The colonel was not cowardly, but, as was natural, he _did_ lean to the
Confederacy. “Peaceful separation, if possible,” was his creed; and
fully believing the South destined to triumph, he took that side at
last, greatly to the delight of his high-spirited Nell, who had been a
Rebel from the first. With a look of reproach which the Colonel never
forgot, Alice Johnson listened to his reasons for joining himself with
the Secessionists, but when at the close of his arguments he kindly
advised her to be a little more careful in expressing her opinions,
saying there was no knowing what Harney, who was known to be bitterly
prejudiced against Spring Bank, might be tempted to do, her blue eyes
flashed proudly as she replied, “I should be unworthy of the state which
gave me birth, were I afraid to say what I think. No, I am not afraid;
and should Harney, with his whole band of marauders, attack our house,
he will find at least one who is not a coward. I would not deny my
country to save my life. Still, I do not think it right to expose myself
unnecessarily to danger, and as Mrs. Worthington is very timid, and very
anxious to go North, where there is safety, I too have concluded that it
is best to leave Spring Bank for a time. Aunt Eunice, who is afraid of
nothing, will remain in charge of the house, while you, we hope, will
have a care for the negroes until we return, or Hugh, if that time ever
comes,” and Alice’s voice trembled as she thought how long it was since
they had heard from Hugh, three months having elapsed since a word had
come to them from him.

Col. Tiffton was glad Alice was going North, for in those excited times
he knew not what harm might befall her, alone and unprotected as she was
at Spring Bank. He would willingly take charge of the negroes, he said,
and he kindly offered to do whatever he could to expedite her departure.
Alice would not confess to him that the great object of her going North
was the hope she had of being nearer Hugh, for it was arranged between
herself and Mrs. Worthington that, after stopping for a few days in
Snowdon they should go on to Washington where some tidings might be
received of the soldier, and where they might perhaps hear from Adah,
who had not yet been found. This was Alice’s plan, and after receiving
the Colonel’s approbation, she communicated it to the negroes, telling
it first to Sam, who begged earnestly to go with her.

“Don’t leave me, Miss Ellis. Take me ’long, please take me to Massah
Hugh. I’se quite peart now, and kin look after Miss Ellis a heap.”

Alice could not promise till she had talked with Mrs. Worthington, who
offered no objection, and it was arranged that with Densie, Sam, and
Lulu, they should start at once for Snowdon. Accordingly, one week after
Alice’s conversation with Col. Tiffton she bade adieu to Spring Bank and
was on her way to the North, where there was safety and quiet.

Anna Millbrook’s eyes were dim with tears, and her heart was sore with
pain, when told that Alice Johnson was waiting for her in the parlor
below. Only the day before had she heard of her brother’s disgrace,
feeling as she heard it, how much rather she would that he had died ere
there were so many stains upon his name. But _Alice_ would comfort her,
and she hastened to meet her. Sitting down beside her, she talked with
her long of all that had transpired since last they met; talked of Adah,
and then of Willie, who at Alice’s request, was taken by her to the
hotel, where Mrs. Worthington was stopping. He had grown to be a most
beautiful and engaging child, and Mrs. Worthington justly felt a thrill
of pride as she clasped him to her bosom, weeping over him passionately.
She could scarcely bear to lose him from her sight, and when later in
the day Anna came down for him, she begged hard for him to stay. But
Willie preferred returning with Mrs. Millbrook, who promised that he
should come every day so long as Mrs. Worthington remained at the hotel.

As soon as Mrs. Richards learned that Mrs. Worthington and Alice were in
town, she insisted upon their coming to Terrace Hill. There were the
pleasant chambers fitted up for ’Lina, they had never been occupied, and
Mrs. Worthington could have them as well as not; or better yet—could
take Anna’s old chamber, with the little room adjoining, where Adah used
to sleep. Mrs. Worthington preferred the latter, and removed with Alice
to Terrace Hill, while at Anna’s request Densie went to Riverside
Cottage, where she used to live, and where she was much happier than she
would have been with strangers.

Not long however could Mrs. Worthington remain contentedly at Snowdon,
and after a time Alice started with her and Lulu for Washington, taking
with them Sam, who seemed a perfect child in his delight at the prospect
of seeing “Massah Hugh.” From a soldier returning home on furlough they
heard that he was with his Regiment but to see him was not so easy a
matter. Indeed, he seemed farther off at Washington than he had done at
Spring Bank, and Alice sometimes questioned the propriety of having left
Kentucky at all. They were not very comfortable at Washington, and as
Mrs. Worthington pined for the pure country air, Alice managed at last
to procure board at the house of a friend whose acquaintance she had
made at the time of her visits to Virginia. It was some distance from
Washington, and so near to Bull Run that when at last the second battle
was fought in that vicinity, the roar of the artillery was distinctly
heard, and they who listened to the noise of that bloody conflict knew
just when the battle ceased, and thought with tearful anguish of the
poor, maimed, suffering wretches left to bleed and die alone. They knew
_Hugh_ must have been in the battle, and Mrs. Worthington’s anxiety
amounted almost to insanity, while Alice, with blanched cheek and
compressed lip, could only pray silently that he might be spared. Only
Sam thought of acting.

“Now is my time,” he said to Alice, as they stood talking together of
Hugh, and wondering if he were safe. “Something tell me Massah Hugh is
hurted somewhar, and I’se gwine to find him. I knows all de way, an’
every tree round dat place. I can hide from de ’Federacy. Dem Rebels let
ole white-har’d nigger look for young massah, and I’se gwine. P’raps I
not find him, but I does somebody some good. I helps somebody’s Massah
Hugh.”

It seemed a crazy project, letting that old man start off on so strange
an errand, but Sam was determined.

“He had a ’sentiment,” as he said, “that Hugh was wounded, and he must
go to him.”

In his presentiment Alice had no faith; but she did not oppose him, and
at parting she said to him hesitatingly,

“Sam,—did you,—do you,—has it ever occurred to you that your master
cared particularly for me;—that is,—cared,—you know how,” and Alice
blushed scarlet while Sam replied eagerly, “Yes, Miss, Sam got mizzable
memory, but he knows dat ar, and it passes him what Massah Hugh done
jine de army for, when he might stay home and haved Miss Ellis just as
Sam pray he might so long. Massah Hugh and Miss Ellis make good span. I
tell Massah. Shall I?”

“Not unless you find him wounded and believe him dying, then, you may
tell him,—tell him—that I said—I loved him; and had he ever come back, I
would have been his wife.”

“I tells him,” was Sam’s reply, as he departed on his errand of mercy,
which proved not to be a fruitless one, for he _did_ find his master,
and falling on his knees beside him, uttered the joyful words we have
before repeated.

To the faint, half-dying Hugh that familiar voice from home and that
dusky form bending over him so pityingly, seemed more like a dream than
a reality. He could not comprehend how Sam came there, or what he was
saying to him. Something he heard of ole Miss and Snow-down, and
Washington; but nothing was real until he caught the name of _Alice_,
and thought Sam said she was there.

“Where, Sam—where?” he asked, trying to raise himself upon his elbow.
“Is Alice here, did you say?”

“No, massah; not ’zactly here—but on de road. If massah could ride, Sam
hold him on, like massah oncet held on ole Sam, and we’ll get to her
directly. They’s kind o’ Secesh folks whar she is, but mighty good to
her. She knowed ’em ’fore, ’case way down here is whar Sam was sold dat
time Miss Ellis comed and show him de road to _Can’an_. Miss Ellis tell
me somethin’ nice for Massah Hugh, ef he’s dyin’—suffin make him so
glad. Is you dyin’, massah?”

“I hardly think I am as bad as that. Can’t you tell unless I am near to
death?” Hugh said; and Sam replied,

“No, massah; dem’s my orders. ‘Ef he’s dyin’, Sam tell him I’—dat’s what
she say. Maybe you _is_ dyin’, massah. Feel and see!”

“It’s possible,” and something like his old mischievous smile played
round Hugh’s white lips as he asked how a chap felt when he was dying.

“I’se got mizzable mem’ry, and I don’t justly ’member,” was Sam’s
answer; “but I reckons he feel berry queer and choky—berry.”

“That’s exactly my case, so you may venture to tell,” Hugh said; and
getting his face close to that of the young man, Sam whispered “She say,
‘Tell massah Hugh—I—I’—you’s _sure_ you’s dyin’?”

“I’m sure I feel as you said I must,” Hugh replied, and Sam went on.
“‘Tell him I loves him; and ef he lives I’ll be his wife.’ Dem’s her
very words, nigh as I can ’member—but what is massah goin’ to do” he
continued, in some surprise, as Hugh attempted to rise.

“Do, I’m going to Alice,” was Hugh’s reply, as with a moan he sank back
again, too weak to rise alone.

“Then you be’nt dyin’, after all,” was Sam’s rueful comment, as he
suggested, “Ef massah only clamber onto Rocket.”

This was easier proposed than done, but after several trials Hugh
succeeded; and, with Sam steadying him while he half lay on Rocket’s
neck, he proceeded slowly and safely through the woods, meeting at last
with some Unionists, who gave him what aid they could, and did not leave
him until they saw him safely deposited in an ambulance, which, in spite
of his entreaties, took him direct to Georgetown. It was a bitter
disappointment to Hugh, so bitter, indeed, that he scarcely felt the
pain when his broken arm was set; and when, at last, he was left alone
in his narrow hospital bed, he turned his face to the wall, and cried,
just as many a poor, homesick soldier had done before him, and will do
again.

Twenty-four hours had passed, and in Hugh’s room it was growing dark
again. All the day he had watched anxiously the door through which
visitors would enter, asking repeatedly if no one had called for him;
but just as the sun was going down he fell away to sleep, dreaming at
last that _Golden Hair_ was there—that her soft, white hands were on his
brow, her sweet lips pressed to his, while her dear voice murmured
softly, “Darling Hugh!”

There was a cry of pain from a distant corner, and Hugh awoke to know it
was no dream—the soft hands on his brow, the kiss upon his lips—for
_Golden Hair was_ there; and by the tears she dropped upon his face, and
the caresses she gave him, he knew that Sam had told him truly. For
several minutes there was silence between them, while the eyes looked
into each other with a deeper meaning than words could have expressed;
then smoothing back his damp brown hair, and letting her fingers still
rest upon his forehead, Alice whispered to him, “I loved you, Hugh, when
you left home, and I hoped that first note would have told you so. I
wish it had, for then we need not have been separated so long.”

Winding his well arm round her neck, and drawing her nearer to him, Hugh
answered,

“It was best just as it is. Had I been sure of your love, I should have
found it harder to leave home. My country needed me. I am glad I have
done what I could to defend it. Glad that I joined the army, for Alice,
darling, Golden Hair, in my lonely tent reading that little Bible you
gave me so long ago, the Saviour found me, and now, whether I live or
not, it is well, for if I die, I am sure you will be mine in Heaven; and
if I live——”

Alice finished the sentence for him,

“If you live, God willing, I shall be your wife. Dear Hugh, I bless the
Good Father, first for bringing you to Himself, and then restoring you
to me.”

                             CHAPTER XXXIX.
                              GOING HOME.

The village hearse was waiting at Snowdon depot, and close beside it
stood the carriage from Terrace Hill; the one sent there for Adah, the
other for her husband, whose life-blood, so freely shed, had wiped away
all stains upon his memory, and enshrined him in the hearts of Snowdon’s
people as a martyr. He was the first dead soldier returned to them, his
the first soldier’s grave in their churchyard; and so a goodly throng
were there, with plaintive fife and muffled drum, to do him honor. His
major was coming with him, it was said—Major Stanley, who had himself
been found in a half-fainting condition watching by the dead—Major
Stanley, who had seen that the body was embalmed, had written to the
wife, and had attended to everything, even to coming on himself by way
of showing his respect. Death is a great softener of errors; and the
village people, who could not remember a time when they had not disliked
John Richards, forgot his faults now that he was dead.

It seemed a long time waiting for the train, but it came at last, and
the crowd involuntarily made a movement forward, and then drew back as a
tall figure appeared up on the platform, his uniform betokening an
officer of rank, and his manner showing plainly that he was master of
ceremonies.

“Major Stanley,” ran in a whisper through the crowd, whose wonder
increased when another, and, if possible, a finer-looking man, emerged
into view, his right arm in a sling, and his face pale and worn, from
the effects of recent illness. _He_ had not been expected, and many
curious glances were cast at him as, slowly descending the steps, he
gave his hand to Mrs. Worthington following close behind. They knew her,
and recognized also the two young ladies, Alice and Adah, as they sprang
from the car. Poor Adah! how she shrank from the public gaze, shuddering