And now, kind reader, you may think that the writer is either a lunatic or a madman to advance a doctrine which claims that God—­the Infinite—­the Everlasting—­the Omnipotent—­the Inscrutable, would turn awhile from the good and survey them not—­allow them to suffer.  We are neither the one nor the other.  Perchance our doctrine is a mere vagary; still, as we glance over our country and see the scenes daily enacted, we cannot believe they are the work of an Almighty Father.  When our maidens are ravished by the hated foe and despoiled of that Virtue held sacred in Heaven, is it the work of God?  When the creeping babe is immolated by the savages of the North, is it a dispensation of Providence?  When the homesteads of the people are given to the flames and the cursed army of Abolitionists exult at their demolition, does the hand of our Heavenly Father direct the work of destruction?  When our temples are profaned by the bacchanalian orgies of the Northern hordes, does the Infinite invite them to desecrate His altars?  They are not His works—­they never were.  These acts which the Christian world shudders at, are the machinations and promptings of Hell, and the Fiends who dwell therein triumph for awhile where the Eye of God is not.

But the Eye of God is not always turned away from His suffering people.  The cry of the wretched is borne to His ear by the angels, and Mercy, Charity and Goodness descend to Earth and sweep away the incarnate spirits infesting it.  In this we behold the Greatness and Righteousness of God, for though He may see not our hardships for awhile, the cry of the Innocent will ascend to Heaven; their sufferings will be obliterated, and if even on earth they gain not happiness, in those realms where sinless Angels abide, all past woes, all past years of want, all former wretchedness, are removed and forgotten, in an eternity of peace and celestial felicity.

And so it was with the soldier’s wife whose sad trials we are narrating to the reader.  The spirit of the angel daughter had winged its flight to the Savior, and the little invisible hand pointed to its mother on earth below, and the Son of God supplicated the Father to relieve the miseries of the innocent.  We have shown how this was done.  The good of earth was the medium of salvation, and her trials are at an end.

Yes, they are at an end!  But with them, when she fell fainting in her husband’s arms on recognizing Awtry, the light of reason expired, and the soldier’s wife was a maniac.

They bore her gently to the residence of Dr. Humphries, and there all that medical science could perform was done, and every attention was lavished upon her.  But it was of no avail; madness had seized the mind of Mrs. Wentworth, and the doctor shook his head sadly as he gazed upon her.  Days passed on, and still she continued in this state.

“I fear she will only recover her reason to die,” observed Dr. Humphries to Harry.  “Could her constitution sustain the frenzied excitement she now labors under, I would have some hope, but the months of wretchedness she has passed through, has so weakened her frame that nothing remains but a wreck of what was once a healthy woman.”