CHAPTER XLI.
"GOOD BYE."
Gentle reader, would you like to follow the friends whom you have met in this simple narrative still farther in the histories of their eventful lives? Has your acquaintance thus far been a pleasant one? This is not all. Every thoughtful mind will draw from the characters of history or romance such lessons of hope and faith as cheer the heart in sorrow or beneath the depressions of despondency something that will guide when the soul is perplexed or shrinking. Sad indeed would the writer of this story be, if in the delineations of the history of our little heroine no lonely wayfarer should be comforted, or no friendless waif taught to look up for the hand that safely leads. God is kind and watchful towards his children, assuring them that they are "better than many sparrows," and therefore cannot fall to the ground without his notice; but is also just to punish and chasten those who oppose his little ones.
Have these truths been set impressively before you? If so we will raise the curtain yet a little higher and glance for one moment into the lives and homes of the few in whom you are interested, after the terrible war is over and peace again settles down like a holy benediction over our beautiful land.
Colonel Hamilton could not be spared from the important position he had occupied from the commencement of the struggle, and although his visits home were frequent, the elegant house on Broad street wore an air of desolation as the shadows of realities and uncertainties crept into it. The reports of victories and defeats brought terror and dismay into every heart, for loved ones were in jeopardy and mourning was in the land.
One day there came a letter from the absent husband that thickened the veil of apprehension and spread a new gloom over the hearts of those who read it. "We must expect bad news my dear wife," it went on to say; "and although I would shield my cherished ones from war's disasters I cannot do it. Reports were brought in last night by our scouts that Rosedale was in ashes and your brother, in a desperate hand to hand encounter with some of the boys in blue, received a wound from which he died before reaching the hospital camp. I was hoping to be able to shield him, and for our mother's sake send him north. But now he is beyond our reach."
"My poor, poor brother!" cried Mrs. Hamilton, as the letter dropped from her hands. "I had placed so much hope on his coming! What can I tell Mother? She is so much better, and was asking only this morning when Charles would be here?"
"We cannot break the new sad news to her," replied the daughter; "let us wait for Father. Somehow he is able to do everything without difficulty."
Lillian smiled in spite of her tears. "Yes, darling, we will wait." But it could not be. The hungry heart of the mother was enduring the agony of famishing, and her cries for her only son were truly pitiful.