“You will, therefore, retain the riflemen composing your scout, but attempt nothing towards enlisting your companies until you receive your instructions personally and in full from headquarters.

     “I am, sir,

     “Your very obedient servant,

     “Wilkinson,
     Adjutant-General. 
     “For Major-General Gates, commanding.”

“Why, in Heaven’s name, should I lose time by journeying to headquarters?” I said, aloud, looking up from my letter.  Ah!  There was the difference between Schuyler, who picked his man, told him what he desired, and left him to fulfil it, and Gates, who chose a man, flung his inexperience into his face, and bade him twirl his thumbs and sit idle until headquarters could teach him how to do what he had been chosen to do, presumably upon his ability to do it!

A helpless sensation of paralysis came over me—­a restless, confused impression of my possible untrustworthiness, and of unfriendliness to me in high quarters, even of a thinly veiled hostility to me.

What a letter!  That was not the way to get work out of a subordinate—­this patronizing of possible energy and enthusiasm, this cold dampening of ardor, as though ardor in itself were a reproach and zeal required reproof.

Wondering why they had chosen me if they thought me a blundering and, perhaps, mischievous zealot, I picked up a parcel, undirected, and broke the string.

Out of it fell two letters.  The writing was my cousin Dorothy’s; and, trembling all over in spite of myself, I broke the seal of the first.  It was undated: 

     “Dearest,—­Your letter from Oriskany is before me.  I am here
     in your room, the door locked, alone with your letter,
     overwhelmed with love and tenderness and fear for you.

     “They tell me that you have been made colonel of a regiment,
     and the honor thrills yet saddens me—­all those colonels
     killed at Oriskany!  Is it a post of special danger, dear?

“Oh, my brave, splendid lover! with your quiet, steady eyes and your bright hair—­you angel on earth who found me a child and left me an adoring woman—­can it be that in this world there is such a thing as death for you?  And could the world last without you?

* * * * *

“Ah me! dreary me! the love that is in me!  Who could believe it?  Who could doubt that it is divine and not inspired by hell as I once feared; it is so beautiful, so hopelessly beautiful, like that faint thrill of splendor that passes shadowing a dream where, for an instant, we think to see a tiny corner of heaven sparkling out through a million fathoms of terrific night....  Did you ever dream that?

* * * * *