Rose did not know. Her interest just then was centered in the “Massachusetts——,” and in her eagerness to hear from Tom, she forgot for a moment that such a regiment as the N. Y. 13th existed. But there were others who did not forget, and just as the question left Annie’s lips, the answer came in the despairing cry which rent the air as some reckless person shouted aloud,
“The 13th a total wreck! Not a man left of Company R.”
“Oh, George,” poor Annie cried, and the next moment Rose held the fainting form upon her lap.
“Drive home,—to Mrs. Graham’s I mean,” she said to Jake, who, with some difficulty made his way through the crowd, but not until the story so cruelly set afloat was contradicted by those who had more coolly read the sad intelligence.
The news was bad enough, but the Rockland company was not mentioned, and its friends had no alternative but to wait until the telegraph wires should bring some tidings of the saved. Rose was the first to be remembered. Will did his duty faithfully.
“A terrible battle,” his message ran. “Soldiers are arriving every hour, but Tom has not come yet.”
A telegram for the Widow Simms came next, the mother’s quick eye taking in at a glance that only Eli’s name and John’s were appended to it. Isaac’s was not there. Where was he then, oh where? She asked this question frantically, refusing to read the note lest it should confirm her fears.
“I’ll read it, mother. Let me see,” Susan said, wresting the paper from her hands, and reading with trembling tones,
“Eli and I are safe. Isaac was last seen leading Lieut. Graham from the field.”
Oh what a piteous wail went up to Heaven then, for Widow Simms, when she received the news, was sitting in Annie’s door, and Annie was kneeling at her side. George was wounded, of course, and if wounded, dead, else why had he not thought of her ere this? Locked in each other’s arms the two stricken women wept bitterly, the mother sobbing amid her tears, “My boy, my boy,” while Annie moaned sadly, “My George, my husband.”