“When Mary’s family heard of our engagement, there was trouble.  They looked higher for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster.  No blame to them.  They forbade me the house, her uncles; but we met in the village and at the neighbors’ houses, and I was happy, knowing she loved me.  Matters were in this state when the war came on.  I had a strong call to look after the old flag, and I hung my head that day when the company raised in our village marched by the schoolhouse to the railroad station; but I couldn’t tear myself away.  About this time the minister’s son, who had been away to college, came to the village.  He met Mary here and there, and they became great friends.  He was a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was natural they should like one another.  Sometimes I winced at seeing him made free of the home from which I was shut out; then I would open the grammar at the leaf where ‘Dear John’ was written up in the corner, and my trouble was gone.  Mary was sorrowful and pale these days, and I think her people were worrying her.

“It was one evening two or three days before we got the news of Bull Run.  I had gone down to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set round the old man’s lot, and was just stepping into the enclosure, when I heard voices from the opposite side.  One was Mary’s, and the other I knew to be young Marston’s, the minister’s son.  I didn’t mean to listen, but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We must never meet again, she was saying in a wild way. We must say good-by here, forever,—­good-by, good-by! And I could hear her sobbing.  Then, presently, she said, hurriedly, No, no; my hand, not my lips!  Then it seemed he kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going towards the parsonage, and the other out by the gate near where I stood.

“I don’t know how long I stood there, but the night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole out of the graveyard and across the road to the schoolhouse.  I unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my bosom.  There was not a sound or a light anywhere as I walked out of the village.  And now,” said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree-trunk, “if the little book ever falls in your way, won’t you see that it comes to no harm, for my sake, and for the sake of the little woman who was true to me and didn’t love me?  Wherever she is to-night, God bless her!”

* * * * *

As we descended to camp with our arms resting on each other’s shoulder, the watch-fires were burning low in the valleys and along the hillsides, and as far as the eye could reach, the silent tents lay bleaching in the moonlight.

III