Many sad sights she saw in the great hospital where she passed some months at intervals,—­one never to be forgotten.  An officer was brought into the ward where she was in attendance.  “Shot through the lungs,—­pretty nearly gone.”

She went softly to his bedside.  He was breathing with great difficulty; his face was almost convulsed with the effort, but she recognized him in a moment; it was Murray Bradshaw,—­Captain Bradshaw, as she knew by the bars on his coat flung upon the bed where he had just been laid.

She addressed him by name, tenderly as if he had been a dear brother; she saw on his face that hers were to be the last kind words he would ever hear.

He turned his glazing eyes upon her.  “Who are you?” he said in a feeble voice.

“An old friend,” she answered; “you knew me as Myrtle Hazard.”

He started.  “You by my bedside!  You caring for me!—­for me, that burned the title to your fortune to ashes before your eyes!  You can’t forgive that,—­I won’t believe it!  Don’t you hate me, dying as I am?”

Myrtle was used to maintaining a perfect calmness of voice and countenance, and she held her feelings firmly down.  “I have nothing to forgive you, Mr. Bradshaw.  You may have meant to do me wrong, but Providence raised up a protector for me.  The paper you burned was not the original,—­it was a copy substituted for it—­”

“And did the old man outwit me after all?” he cried out, rising suddenly in bed, and clasping his hands behind his head to give him a few more gasps of breath.  “I knew he was cunning, but I thought I was his match.  It must have been Byles Gridley,—­nobody else.  And so the old man beat me after all, and saved you from ruin!  Thank God that it came out so!  Thank God!  I can die now.  Give me your hand, Myrtle.”

She took his hand, and held it until it gently loosed its hold, and he ceased to breathe.  Myrtle’s creed was a simple one, with more of trust and love in it than of systematized articles of belief.  She cherished the fond hope that these last words of one who had erred so miserably were a token of some blessed change which the influences of the better world might carry onward until he should have outgrown the sins and the weaknesses of his earthly career.

Soon after this she rejoined her husband in the camp.  From time to time they received stray copies of the “Banner and Oracle,” which, to Myrtle especially, were full of interest, even to the last advertisement.  A few paragraphs may be reproduced here which relate to persons who have figured in this narrative.

“Templeof Hymen.

“Married, on the 6th instant, Fordyce Hurlbut, M. D., to Olive, only daughter of the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth.  The editor of this paper returns his acknowledgments for a bountiful slice of the wedding-cake.  May their shadows never be less!”

Not many weeks after this appeared the following: