“Do you remember this case, Erminie?”
“Dear father, there were so many such cases! I don’t remember this particular one.”
“He remembers you. As long as he lives he will remember you! He talked to me about you. He described your looks and manners and tone of voice. He told me your name, and said that you had lost your father in the first battle of Bull Run. He said that he should always be kind to the Union prisoners for your sake. I longed to tell him that I was your father; but I could not do so without disclosing my name, which I wished to keep a secret—which then more than ever I determined to keep a secret.”
“But why, dear father?”
“Why?—For your sake more than for any other reason, my Minie!”
“For my sake!”
“Ay, ay! listen! You had mourned me as dead. Time and religion had reconciled you to your loss, and softened your sorrow. But suppose you had heard that I was living, and suffering a painful captivity in a Southern prison? Would not all your wounds have been torn open afresh, and kept open? Would not your heart have bled both day and night? Could you have done your daily duty in the hospitals with the image of your old father a captive in a Confederate prison, ever present to your mind?”
“Oh no, no, no!”
“Therefore you see I was right in keeping the secret, and I kept it religiously until the capture of Charleston.”
“That was several weeks ago?” said Erminie, interrogatively.