Several persons approaching at that moment, he moved away hurriedly after hissing in her ear:  “Take your choice.  In either one way or the other I am revenged on you for the way you rejected my addresses in past years.”

She landed on the shore, and a few minutes after the boat moved back on its way to New Orleans, when taking her small trunk in her hands the soldier’s wife, with her two children, started on their long and lively march.  For where?  She knew not.  There she was, an utter stranger with two tender children, far from her home, and with only two hundred dollars in money.  Where could she go to for support.  Her husband was in a foreign prison, and she a wanderer in a strange State.  Her heart sank within her, and the soldier’s wife wept.  Aye, wept!  Not tears of regret at what she had sacrificed, but tears of loneliness.  Who would not weep if they were parted from those they love, and were cast in a strange land without a friend, and with scarcely any means?

We leave the soldier’s wife for a brief while, and transport the reader to her husband.  Her trials have commenced—­God help her!

CHAPTER EIGHTH.

The prisoners—­the husband and the lover.

We stated that on the recovery of Alfred Wentworth and Lieutenant Shackleford from their wounds, both were sent to Camp Douglas together, and as Alfred had no regiment of his own captured, the lieutenant promptly requested him to become one of his mess.  The generous courage exhibited by Alfred Wentworth, and the fact that but for his chivalric attention, he should have died on the bloody field of Fort Donelson, had created a feeling of gratitude in Lieutenant Shackleford for his preserver, which, on closer acquaintance, had ripened into a warm friendship, and he soon made Alfred acquainted with the fact of his betrothal to Emma Humphries, and Alfred in turn would speak of his wife and children in such tones of affection as only those who love can use.  They would sit down for hours and converse on the loved ones at home, thus wiling away the sad and lonely hours of a prison life, until the news was received in Chicago of the fall of New Orleans.  Although he bitterly regretted his native city having fallen into the hands of the enemy, the opportunity which it presented of once more being able to correspond with his wife, made him feel happier, and as soon as mail communication was received with the city, he requested and obtained permission to write her.

Alfred Wentworth had not the slightest idea that Horace Awtry would ever dare to offend his wife, much less to offer infamous proposals, and on their being refused have her driven from the home he had placed her in.  It is true that his wife had written to him that Mr. Awtry had renewed his acquaintance with her, but her statements of his kind attention to her and the children, and her mentioning the eager manner in which he had relieved her anxiety after the battle of the 21st of July, 1861, instead of raising any suspicion on his part of the honesty and purity of his motives, only made him return thanks in his heart for the previous kindness shown to his wife.