"For three weeks longer I stayed up in that loft, and in that time three more escaped prisoners were brought there, and one Union refugee from North Carolina. We left in company one wild, rainy night, when the storm and darkness must have been sent for our special protection, and Jack Jennings cried like a little child when he bade me good-by, promising, if he survived the war, to find his way to the North and visit me in New York. I should be prouder, Helen, to welcome him to our home than to entertain the Emperor of France, while Bab should have a seat at my own table, and I be honored by it. There are many such noble spirits there, and when I remember them, I wish to spare a land which I once hoped might be burned with fire until no trace was left. We found them everywhere, and especially among the mountains of Tennessee, where, but for their timely aid, we had surely been recaptured. The negroes, too, were powerful helps, and in no single case has a black man proved treacherous to his suffering white brother, I was not an Abolitionist when the war broke out, but I am one now, and to see the negro free I would almost spill my last drop of blood. They are a patient, all-enduring, faithful race, and without them the bones of many a poor wretch who now sits by his own fireside and recounts the perils he has escaped, would whiten in the Southern swamps or on the Southern mountains. Three times were we chased by bloodhounds, and in every case the negroes were the means of saving us from certain death. For weeks we were hidden in a cave, hunted by the Confederates by day, and fed at night by negroes, who told us when and where to go. With blistered feet and bruised limbs, we reached the lines at last, when fever attacked me for the second time and brought me near to death. Somebody wrote to you, but you never received it, and when I grew better I would not let them write again, as I wanted to surprise you. As soon as I was able I started North, my thoughts full of the joyful meeting in store—a meeting which I dreaded, too, for I knew you must think me dead, and I felt so sorry for you, my darling, knowing, as I did, you would mourn for your soldier husband. That my darling has mourned is written on her face, and needs no words to tell it; but that is over now," Mark said, folding his wife closer to him, and kissing the pale lips which whispered:
"Yes, I have been so sorry, Mark—so tired, so sad, and life was such a burden, I would gladly have laid it down."
"The burden is now removed," Mark said, and then he told her how, arrived at Albany, he had telegraphed to his mother, asking where Helen was.
"In Silverton," was the reply, and so he came on in the morning train, meeting his mother in Springfield, as he had half expected to do, knowing that she could leave New York in time to join him there.
"No words of mine," he said, "are adequate to describe the thrill of joy with which I looked again upon the hills and rocks so identified with you that I loved them for your sake, hailing them as old, familiar friends, and actually growing sick and faint with excitement when, through the leafless woods, I caught the gleam of Fairy Pond, where I gathered the lilies for you. Does my darling remember it?"
He knew she did by the clasp of her hand, and he continued:
"Had a dead body risen from its grave, and walked into the farmhouse, carrying its coffin with it, it could not have created greater consternation, or made worse havoc with the people's wits than did my sudden appearance in their midst. Good Aunt Betsy, I am sorry to say, fell the entire length of the cellar stairs, spraining her ankle, bruising her elbow shockingly, and, direst calamity of all, in her estimation, breaking the dish of charlotte russe she was holding in her hand. There is a wedding in progress, I learned from mother, and it seems very meet that I should come at this time, making, in reality, a double wedding, when I can truly claim my bride," and Mark kissed Helen passionately, laughing to see how the blushes broke over her white face, and burned upon her neck.
Those were happy moments which they passed together upon that ledge of rocks, happy enough to atone for all the dreadful past, and when at last they arose and slowly retraced their steps to the farmhouse, it seemed to Mark that Helen's cheeks were rounder, fuller, than when he found her, while Helen knew that the arm on which she leaned was stronger than when it first inclosed her an hour or two ago.