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d and tired, she lifted her face from its rest, and held out her arms to me. I took her up, and put her to bed like a child. I hung the coat and cap and sword where she could see them. I made her take a cup of broth, and before long, with her eyes fixed on the things I had hung up, she fell asleep, and slept heavily, without waking, till the next morning.
I feared almost to enter her room when I heard her stir; I had dreaded her waking,--that terrible hour that all know who have suffered, the dim awakening shadow that darkens so swiftly to black reality; but I need not have dreaded it for her. She told me afterward that in all that sleep she never lost the knowledge of her grief; she did not come into it as a surprise. Frank had seemed to be with her, distant, sad, yet consoling; she felt that he was gone, but not utterly,--that there was drear separation and loneliness, but not forever.
When I went in, she lay there awake, looking at her trophy, as she came to call it, her eyes with all their light quenched and sodden out with crying, her face pale and unalterably sad, but natural in its sweetness and mobility. She drew me down to her and kissed me.
"May I get up?" she asked; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on,--"I have been selfish, Sue; I will try to be better now; I won't run away from my battle. Oh, how glad I am he didn't run away! It is dreadful now, dreadful! Perhaps, if I had to choose if he should have run away or--or this, I should have wanted him to run,--I'm afraid I should. But I am glad now. If God wanted him, I'm glad he went from the front ranks. Oh, those poor women whose husbands ran away, and were killed, too!"
She seemed to be so comforted by that one thought! It was a strange trait in the little creature; I could not quite fathom it.
After this, she came down-stairs and went about among us, busying herself in various little ways. She never went to the grave-yard; but whenever she was a little tired, I was sure to find her sitting in her r