"I promise," she answered solemnly, "and no man shall ever have the right to stop me."
When they were ready to leave the place he had to lead her to the carriage, for her eyes were blinded by tears.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.
With bayonets flashing in the sunlight, with flags flying and keeping step to the martial music, Southton's brave Company E marched full one hundred strong to the depot the next day, ready to leave for the war.
Almost the entire town was there to see them off, and hundreds of men, old and young, filled the air with cheers. Mingling in that throng were as many mothers, wives, sweethearts and sisters with aching hearts, whose sobs of anguish were woven into the cheering. Strong men wept as well. As the train rolled away, Manson fought the tears back that he might not lose the last sight of one fair girl whose heart he knew was breaking. When it was all over, and he realized that for months or years, or perhaps never, would he behold her again, he knew what war and parting meant. He had obeyed his conscience and sense of duty, and now he must pay the price, and the payment was very bitter. Of his future he knew not, or what it might hold for him. He could only hope that when his hour of trial came that he would not falter, and if the worst must come that he would find strength to meet it as a soldier should.
War is such a ghastly, hideous horror, and so utterly at variance with this simple narrative, that I hesitate to speak of it. There can be no moments of happiness, no rifts of sunshine, and but few gleams of hope woven into the picture. All must be as war is—a varying but continued succession of dreaded horror and the fear of death. The first month of Manson's experience at the training camp was hard only in anticipation, and but a daily round of duty easily performed and soon passed. Liddy's frequent letters, each filled with all the sweet and loving words that, like flowers, naturally spring from a woman's heart, cheered him greatly; but when the order came to go to the front, the scene changed, and the reality of war came. He dreaded the first shock, not so much from fear of death; but lest his courage fail. When it came at Chancellorsville it was all over before he knew it. Although under fire for eight hours, he was not conscious of the lapse of time or aught else, except that he obeyed orders and loaded and fired with the rest; forgetting that he might fall, or whether he was brute or human. That night he wrote to Liddy: "We have had our first battle, and for many hours I forgot even you. I know now that I shall not falter. Poor Luzerne Norton, one of our academy boys, was killed, also three others from our company; and seven were wounded."
When the letter reached Liddy her heart sank. To know that one of her bright and happy schoolmates of a few months before had been shot and killed, and others wounded, was to have the dread reality of war brought very near home. "Thank God my boy was spared," she thought. That night she wrote him the most loving letter he had ever received, concluding with: "Be brave, my darling, and always remember that come what may I shall keep my promise."