“By the way, I believe I’ll send you a lock of my hair, cut just over my left ear, where you used to think it curled so nicely. Perhaps it will enhance its value if you know I severed it with a bowie knife, such as I now carry with me. Tell Rose I’ll send her a calico dress by and by. It will be the most costly present I can make her if the blockade is carried out, but it won’t be; that old Bull across the sea will be goring you with his horns first you know. Then you’ll have a sweet time up there, beset before and behind, and possibly annexed to Canada. But I don’t want to make you feel any bluer than you are probably feeling, so good-bye, good-bye.
“Your affectionate Rebel,
“James M. Carleton.”
“P. S.—I shall send this to Washington by a chap who is going to desert, you know, and join the Federals with a pitiful story about having been pressed into the Rebel service, telling them, too, how poor and weak and demoralized we are,—how a handful of troops can lick us, and so draw them into our web, as a spider tempts a fly, don’t you see? They offered me that honor, knowing that a son of George Carleton, twice M. C. from Massachusetts, and now defunct, would be above suspicion, and would thus gather a heap of items. But hang me, if I could turn spy on any terms. So I respectfully declined. You see I am quite a somebody, owing to my having had sense enough to wait until I was twenty-one, ere I ran away, and so bringing a part of my property with me. Money makes the mare go here as elsewhere, but I’m about running out. I wish you could send me a few thousand, can’t you?”
And this was Jimmie’s letter, over which the mother had wept far bitterer tears than any she shed when her eldest born bade her his last farewell, giving to her, just as Jimmie had done, a lock of his brown hair. She had it with her now, and she laid them both on Rose’s hand,—the dark brown lock, and the short black silken curl, which twined itself around Rose’s finger, as if it loved the snowy resting-place. Rose’s first impulse was to shake it off as if it had been a guilty thing; but the sight of it recalled so vividly the handsome, saucy face, and laughing, mischievous black eyes it once had helped to shade, that she pressed it to her lips, and whispered sadly, “Dear Jimmie, I cannot hate him if I try, nor see how he is greatly at fault,” while in her heart was the unframed prayer that God would care for the Rebel-boy, and bring him back to them.
Mrs. Carleton was proud of her family name,—proud of her family pride,—and she shrank from having it known how it had been disgraced, so after Rose’s first grief was over she bade her keep it a secret, and Rose promised readily, never doubting for a moment her ability to do so. Rose had already borne much that morning. Excessive weeping for her husband, added to what she had heard of Jimmie, took her strength away, and she spent that first weary day in bed, sometimes sobbing bitterly as the dread reality came over her that Will was really gone, and again starting up from a feverish, broken sleep with the idea that it was all a dream, or a horrid nightmare, from which she should at last awake. Callers were all excluded, and with a delicious feeling that she was not to be disturbed, Rose, late in the afternoon, lay watching the western sunlight dancing on the wall, when a step upon the stairs was heard, and in a moment Widow Simms appeared, her sharp face softening into an expression of genuine pity when she saw how white and wan Rose was looking.
“They tried to keep me out,” she said, “that brawny cook of yours and that filigree waiting-maid, but I would come up, and here I am.”
Then sitting down by Rose she told her Annie had sent her there. “She’s sorry for you,” the widow said, “and she sent this to tell you so,” and the widow handed Rose a tiny note, written by Annie Graham. Once Rose would have resented the act as implying too much familiarity, but her heart was greatly softened, while, had she tried her best, she could not have regarded Annie Graham in the light of an inferior. Tearing open the envelope she read:
“My dear Mrs. Mather—I am sure you will pardon the liberty I am taking. My apology is that I feel so deeply for you, for I understand just what you are suffering,—understand how wearily the hours drag on, knowing as you do that with the waning daylight his step will not be heard just by the door, making in your heart little throbs of joy, such as no other step can make. I am so sorry for you, and I had hoped you at least might be spared, but God in his wisdom has seen fit to order it otherwise, and we know that what He does is right. Still it is hard to bear,—harder for you than for me, perhaps, and when this morning I heard the car signal given, I knelt just where I did when my own husband went away, and asked our Heavenly Father to bring your Willie back in safety, and, Mrs. Mather, I am sure He will, for I felt, even then, an answer to my prayer,—something which said, ‘It shall be as you ask.’
“Dear Mrs. Mather, try to be comforted; try to see the brighter side; try to pray, and be sure the darkness now enveloping you so like a pall will pass away, and the sunshine be the brighter for the cloud. Come and see me when you feel like it, and remember, you have at least two friends who pray for you, one at the Father’s right hand in Heaven, and one in her cottage in the Hollow.