With Surrey, to decide was to act.  The second letter, full of sweetest yet intensest love,—­his heart laid bare to her,—­was written; was sent, enclosed in one to his aunt.  Tom was away in another section, fighting manfully for the dear old flag, or the precious missive would have been intrusted to his care.  He sent it thus that it might reach her sooner.  Now that he had a fresh hope, he could not wait to write for her address, and forward it himself to her hands; he must adopt the speediest method of putting it in her possession.

In a little space came answer from Mrs. Russell, enclosing the letter he had sent:  a kindly epistle it was.  He was a sort of idol with this same aunt, so she had put many things on paper that were steeped in gentleness and affection ere she said at the end, “I re-enclose your letter.  I have seen Miss Ercildoune.  She restores it to you; she implores you never to write her again,—­to forget her.  I add my entreaties to hers.  She begs of me to beseech you not to try her by any further appeals, as she will but return them unopened.”  That was all.

What could it mean?  He loved her so absolutely, he had such exalted faith in her kindness, her gentleness, her fairness and superiority,—­in her,—­that he could not believe she would so thrust back his love, purely and chivalrously offered, with something that seemed like ignominy, unless she had a sufficient reason—­or one she deemed such—­for treating so cruelly him and the offering he laid at her feet.

But she had spoken.  It was for him, then, when she bade silence, to keep it; when she refused his gift, to refrain from thrusting it upon her attention and heart.  But ah, the silence and the refraining!  Ah, the time—­the weary, sore, intolerable time—­that followed!  Summer, and autumn, and winter, and the seasons repeated once again, he tramped across the soil of Virginia, already wet with rebel and patriot blood; he felt the shame and agony of Bull Run; he was in the night struggle at Ball’s Bluff, where those wondrous Harvard boys found it “sweet to die for their country,” and discovered, for them, “death to be but one step onward in life.”  He lay in camp, chafing with impatience and indignation as the long months wore away, and the thousands of graves about Washington, filled by disease and inaction, made “all quiet along the Potomac.”  He went down to Yorktown; was in the sweat and fury of the seven days’ fight; away in the far South, where fever and pestilence stood guard to seize those who were spared by the bullet and bayonet; and on many a field well lost or won.  Through it all marching or fighting, sick, wounded thrice and again; praised, admired, heroic, promoted,—­from private soldier to general,—­through two years and more of such fiery experience, no part of the tender love was burned away, tarnished, or dimmed.

Sometimes, indeed, he even smiled at himself for the constant thought, and felt that he must certainly be demented on this one point at least, since it colored every impression of his life, and, in some shape, thrust itself upon him at the most unseemly and foreign times.