effort to understand the Captain, retraced his steps. Finding the Adjutant he told him of his lack of success, and together they repaired to the hospital tent to break the unwelcome news.
At the time of his entry into the Hospital the Lieutenant was impressed with the belief that the illness would be his last, and he daily grew more solicitous as to the success of his application for a furlough. Another coughing fit had, during their absence, intervened, and as the two cautiously untied the flaps and entered the stifling atmosphere of the crowded tent, the Surgeon and a friend or two were bending anxiously about the cot. Their entry attracted the attention of the dying Lieutenant; for that condition his faint hurried breathing, interrupted by occasional gasps, and the rolling, fast glazing eye, too plainly denoted. A look of anxious inquiry,—a faint shake of the head from the Captain—for strong-voiced as he was, his tongue refused the duty of informing the dying man of what had become daily, unwelcome news.
"Oh, my God! must I,—must I die without again seeing Mary and the babies!" with clasped hands he gasped, half rising, and casting at the same time an imploring look at the Surgeon.
But the effort was too much. His head fell back upon the blankets. A gurgling sound was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the babies. The babies,—Ma——" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the Potomac on an everlasting furlough.
Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when there was
the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door. Merciful God! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"—but Mary was a widow, and the babies fatherless.
By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the sight of the black pine coffin was Mary's first intimation of her loss. Her worst anticipations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.
A fortnight passed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers, almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of the Lieutenant, returned "approved."
Measured by poor Mary's loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case, the workings of Red Tape!