"Why, where did you see me before?"
"I nursed poor Captain White in the hospital at Jansi, and I knew you by your coming so often to see him."
"I did not remember you."
"No, sir, perhaps not; but I did you, though it was only this morning that I remembered anything about the letter, and that is how it is they often get delayed: they are given to people very often, to send on, who know nothing at all about them, and so they get put on one side, and sometimes forgotten altogether. I suppose that was sent here because someone knew that when you were stationed here a year ago, you were in hospital with jaundice, and here it has been ever since."
"It is high time things were altered, then," replied Hubert, "if this is how the letters are treated."
"Yes, sir, it is," said the nurse; "but you don't seem very anxious to read your letter, now you have it."
Hubert said no more. Anxious indeed he was to know what that letter contained, but fearful to open it; the battle, everything indeed in warfare he could face with boldness, but before that silent, soiled, fairy-like packet in his hand his whole nature quailed. Had he been alone, perhaps he would not have opened it at all; but the eye of another was upon him, and perhaps it was to save betrayal that he broke the seal. It was from his father; there was nothing reproachful in it, but a great deal of news about the family and their affectionate remembrance of him; a long account of letters written, and their fears that they had not reached him; then an earnest pleading that if he received that he would write to them immediately, for their anxiety and disappointment were very great.
Hubert read his letter several times; it was not the first he had received, though perhaps it was the first that he really felt anxious to answer; but he was too much out of health to reply to it then. It was frequently a silent companion to him during the remainder of his stay in the hospital, though when he grew better and returned again to his old companions, somehow his father's letter was forgotten.
Hubert's illness had no effect upon him for good; it was sent, no doubt in mercy, to check, at least for a time, the career he was running; but health had returned, and so had he to his evil habits. Not one thought did he ever willingly give to his parents, or the good precepts they had tried to teach him; but when at times a few lines of a hymn, or a few words of an early learnt prayer, would, in spite of all his efforts, come across his mind, he had become so bold in sin that he cursed the intruding memory of his purer days.
How little that young soldier thought of the merciful providence that was watching over him! And it was doubtless in answer to his parents' prayers that the little snatches of his early lessons were allowed to intrude so repeatedly upon him, to bring him back, if possible, to a better life. Take courage, mothers, even though the seed now sown seems to perish as it falls; and continue to store up in the little mind passages of holy writ, the simple prayer, and the childish hymn; long, long may the soil remain barren, but a distant storm-cloud may shed its torrents there, and then the fruit of thy labours may return like the autumn grain, and ye shall reap, if ye faint not.