“Oh!” cried Jim Wetherby, excitedly, “them
was the last words I heard from him just before the
shell burst, and he looks now just as he did then.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Barnes, sadly and gravely,
“memory came back to him at the point where
he lost it. He has died as we thought at first—a
brave soldier leading a charge.”
The stern, grand impress of battle remained upon the
officer’s countenance. Friends and neighbors
looked upon his ennobled visage with awe, and preserved
in honored remembrance the real man that temporarily
had been obscured. Helen’s eyes, when taking
her farewell look, were not so blinded with tears
but that she recognized his restored manhood.
Death’s touch had been more potent than love’s
appeal.
In the Wilderness, upon a day fatal to him and so
many thousands, Captain Nichol had prophesied of the
happy days of peace. They came, and he was not
forgotten.
One evening Dr. Barnes was sitting with Martine and
Helen at their fireside. They had been talking
about Nichol, and Helen remarked thoughtfully, “It
was so very strange that he should have regained his
memory in the way and at the time he did.”
“No,” replied the physician, “that
part of his experience does not strike me as so very
strange. In typhoid cases a lucid interval is
apt to precede death. His brain, like his body,
was depleted, shrunken slightly by disease. This
impoverishment probably removed the cerebral obstruction,
and the organ of memory renewed its action at the
point where it had been arrested. My theory explains
his last ejaculation, ‘Ah!’ It was his
involuntary exclamation as he again heard the shell
burst. The reproduction in his mind of this explosion
killed him instantly after all. He was too enfeebled
to bear the shock. If he had passed from delirium
into quiet sleep—ah, well! he is dead,
and that is all we can know with certainty.”
“Well,” said Martine, with a deep breath,
“I am glad he had every chance that it was possible
for us to give him.”
“Yes, Hobart,” added his wife, gently,
“you did your whole duty, and I do not forget
what it cost you.”
“Mother,” remarked Farmer Banning, discontentedly,
“Susie is making a long visit.”
“She is coming home next week,” said his
cheery wife. She had drawn her low chair close
to the air-tight stove, for a late March snowstorm
was raging without.
“It seems to me that I miss her more and more.”
“Well, I’m not jealous.”
“Oh, come, wife, you needn’t be.
The idea! But I’d be jealous if our little
girl was sorter weaned away from us by this visit in
town.”
“Now, see here, father, you beat all the men
I ever heard of in scolding about farmers borrowing,
and here you are borrowing trouble.”
“Well, I hope I won’t have to pay soon.
But I’ve been thinking that the old farmhouse
may look small and appear lonely after her gay winter.
When she is away, it’s too big for me, and a
suspicion lonely for us both. I’ve seen
that you’ve missed her more than I have.”
