I smiled bitterly at this designation of my journey's end.
“Yes, if you can so name a few weed-grown fields and a vacant negro cabin. I certainly shall have to lay the foundation anew most literally.”
“Will you not let me aid you?” he questioned eagerly. “I possess some means, and surely our friendship is sufficiently established to warrant me in making the offer. You will not refuse?”
“I must,” I answered firmly. “Yet I do not value the offer the less. Sometime I may even remind you of it, but now I prefer to dig, as the others must. I shall be the stronger for it, and shall thus sooner forget the total wreck.”
For a few moments we walked on together in silence, each leading his horse. I could not but note the contrast between us in dress and bearing. Victory and defeat, each had stamped its own.
“Wayne,” he asked at length, glancing furtively at me, as if to mark the effect of his words, “did you know that Mrs. Brennan was again with us?”
The name thus spoken set my heart to instant throbbing, but I sought to answer carelessly. Whatever he may have surmised, it was plainly my duty to hide our secret still.
“I was not even aware she had been away.”
“Oh, yes; she returned North immediately after your last parting, and came back only last week. So many wives and relatives of the officers have come down of late, knowing the war to be practically at an end, that our camp has become like a huge picnic pavilion. It is quite the fashionable fad just now to visit the front. Mrs. Brennan accompanied the wife of one of the division commanders from her State—Connecticut, you know.”
There was much I longed to ask regarding her, but I would not venture to fan his suspicions. In hope that I might turn his thought I asked, “And you; are you yet married?”