From the time of his capture, nothing more was heard of poor Heinrich in his sad home on the Lake shore, and he was at last given up as dead by all his friends, except little Bertha. She had a "feeling," she said, that he was living still, and would come back one day, if only she could keep up heart for him. He might be so weak and ill, she thought, that he would die if she once should give him up,—but not till then. O little woman, great was thy faith! Bertha knew not that she was already called by neighbors and friends "the little widow." She would have passionately rejected the title. She "could not make him dead."
She had little time for fretting about her absent friend. Her mother's brave spirit had bent under the successive burdens of sorrow, and her bodily strength for a while gave way. Carl, the invalid soldier, had much difficulty in managing the affairs of the farm, and nearly all the cares of the household came upon Bertha. O, nobly she bore herself under them. She so completely took the place of her sick mother, that all went well in that humble and peaceful home, till the bitterest trouble was past, and the good mother rallied and was able to take part of the burden of labor and care, which, however cheerfully borne, was quite too heavy for such young shoulders.
Bertha's wise little head was perplexed. There was to be a great Sanitary fair in the city near by, and she felt a passionate desire to contribute something towards the great and good work. What could she do? She was not rich enough to give money; she could not paint nor embroider; she had not the skill to manufacture elegant trifles; she was not old or pretty or fashionable enough to stand behind one of the tables. What could she do?
At last it occurred to her that she could contribute to the refreshment department a roll of butter of her own churning, from the milk of her own little snow-white cow. So, with her good mother's consent, she saved all the cream off the rich milk of her pet for a week, and dedicated the golden product to the soldiers. She had two churnings, and the result was five pounds of delicious butter. Her pleasant work was done in the open air, before the side-door of the cottage, in sight of the beautiful lake. On the day of her second churning, her thoughts were peculiarly sweet and cheerful. She sung as gayly as the robin, nestling in the vine-leaves over the cottage window. Her soul was as serene as the sky, her heart as tranquil as the lake, sleeping in the still sunshine.
As Bertha worked with all the strength of her vigorous little arms, and with a gay good-will, little jets of cream now and then spirted up around the dasher, sometimes sprinkling her round, rosy face, and once or twice reaching her smiling lips to dissolve in sweetness there; and she said to herself, "How many sweet and beautiful things have gone to make up this golden cream!—the tender bloom of the early summer clover and daisies, and dew and sunshine, and by and by, when it hardens into more golden butter, and goes to the 'Sanitary,' won't more beautiful things still be added to it?—pity, and love, and patriotism, and the blessing of God?" Then her thoughts wandered, and her face clouded, and she murmured, "O our poor sick and wounded soldiers! O the poor prisoners! O my poor, dear Heinrich!"
Just then she heard her mother call her in an eager, trembling voice. She ran into the cottage to see, seated in the neat kitchen, a young soldier, in a faded and tattered uniform,—a pale, emaciated figure, childlike in weakness, but old in suffering.
Bertha knew him rather by heart than by sight, and, falling on his neck, cried, "Dear, dear Heinrich! I have always said the Lord would bring you back, and He has, has n't he?"
"Yes, little wife, all that the Rebels have left of me."
The drummer-boy's story was sad and strange but such stories are painfully common now-a-days. He had escaped from the stockade with a party of friends; they had been chased by bloodhounds and all retaken. Heinrich escaped again, alone; he was befriended, fed, guided by loyal negroes; he made his way, on foot, through the mountains of Tennessee, and, after countless hardships and adventures, reached the glorious Northwest, and his home. He was ill with a disease brought on by starvation and exposure, and though he had no battle-wounds to show, there were, on his neck and arms, the terrible marks of the bloodhound's teeth,—surely honorable scars. On the whole, Bertha Johansen thought her cousin Heinrich a hero, and I think she was right.
But to return to the Sanitary butter,—"the little widow's mite." Bertha made it up into beautiful rolls, which she printed with a stamp representing buttercups and clover-flowers, and it looked deliciously tempting. "There is only five pounds," she said, as she walked towards the Fair Grounds, bearing her offering in a neat basket, covered with a snowy napkin. "Only five pounds; how I wish there were fifty. If our dear Lord were only here on earth, He could easily make them fifty. If He could multiply loaves of bread, I suppose He could rolls of butter. But, O dear, He is n't here!"