drawing maps and waiting for Grant to flank Lee out of Petersburg and Richmond.  “War,” wrote the young woman, “must be rather a dull business.  Have you no adventures?  Tom McGregor wrote his father that you had a thrilling experience in the trenches lately.  The doctor spoke of it to Aunt Ann, who was surprised I had never mentioned it.  Don’t dry up into an old regular like the inspecting major of ordnance at the mills.

“Expectantly yours,

“LEILA GREY.

“A Happy Christmas, Jack.”

“Oh, Great Scott!” laughed John.  He read it again.  Not a word of herself, nor any of her rides, or of the incessant reading she liked to discuss with him.  Some dim suspicion of the why of this impersonal letter gently flattered the winged hopefulness of love.  “Well, I think I shall punish you, Miss Grey, for sending me a Christmas letter like that.”  Oh, the dear old playmate, the tease, the eyes full of tenderness when the child’s shaft of satire hurt!  He laughed gaily as he went through the historically famous test of courage in snuffing the flaring candle wicks with his fingers.  The little cabin was warm, the night silent, not a sound came from the lines a mile away to disturb the peaceful memories of home within the thirty thousand pickets needed to guard our far-spread army.  Men on both sides spoke this Christmas night, for they were often near and exchanged greetings as they called out, “Halloa, Johnny Reb, Merry Christmas!”

“Same to you, Yank,” and during that sacred night there was the truce of God and overhead the silence of the solemn stars.

As the young Captain became altogether comfortable, his thoughts wandered far afield—­always at last to Josiah’s pansy, the many-masked Leila, and behind her pretty feminine disguises the serious-minded woman for whom, as he smilingly consulted his fancy, he found no flower emblem to suit him.  The letter he read once more represented many Leilas.  Could he answer all of them and abide too by the silence he meant to preserve until the war was over?  The imp of mischief was at his side.  There was no kind of personal word of herself in the letter, except that he was ordered to talk of John Penhallow and his adventures.  He wrote far into the Christmas night: 

“DEAR LEILA:  To hear is to obey.  I am to write of myself—­of adventures.  Nearness to death in the trenches is an every-second-day adventure enough—­no one talks of it.  Tom was ill-advised to report of me at home.  I used to dream of the romance of war when I was a boy.  There is very little romance in it, and much dirt, awful horrors of the dead and wounded, of battles lost or won, and waste beyond conception.  After a big fight or wearying march one could collect material for a rummage-sale such as would rout Aunt Ann’s ideal of an amusing auction of useless things.

“My love to one and all, and above all to the dear Colonel who is never long out of my mind.