“Perhaps the fate that they have just met was, under all the circumstances, the best for them,” said Justin.
“Oh! how much the best! Poor lady!” said Wing, uncovering the face of Alberta and gazing tenderly upon it. “Poor, poor lady! She had but one great dread in all her dreadful life—to be separated from her beloved. She had but one earnest prayer—to be with him always, forever and ever. Her prayer is granted. As she clung to him through all his desperate life, so he would not desert her even in death! no, not even to save himself from certain capture and from the shameful scaffold. Call them traitors, if you must; but they were true as truth to each other—true in life and in death! And they are inseparable for all eternity. Poor girl! I remember her words once when speaking of Dante’s story of Francesca and Paulo in Hell:—‘It might have been worse,’ she said. ‘One might have been in Heaven!’ And I knew that she was thinking of herself and her ‘Free Sword.’”
As Wing spoke, he reverently covered the faces of the dead and arose from his knees.
“Oh, my Colonel,” he next said, “after all, I think that those who have fallen in this war may be happier than those who survive, burdened with the memory of its horrors!”
At that moment the sound of many horses’ feet was heard approaching, and presently a squad of Union cavalry rode up, having Albert Goldsborough, Abershaw, Haddycraff, and other guerrilla officers as prisoners.
“We cut off their retreat, sir,” reported the officer in command of the party.
Colonel Rosenthal advanced to receive the sword of the guerrilla leader.
Goldsborough handed it over in perfect silence. There was not a word spoken between the two.
Then Colonel Rosenthal ordered the prisoners taken to the rear and guarded.
Next he beckoned an officer, and directed him to take charge of the remains of the Free Sword and his unfortunate wife, and to see to their removal, and their preparation for decent interment.