“I’ll put in a few pegs right along to keep in mind what you say; and I’ll give you a fair show by seeing to it that the girl gets your letter before Zeke can steal a march on you.”

“That’s all I ask,” said Zeb, with compressed lips.  “She shall choose between us.  It’s hard enough to write, but it will be a sight easier than facing her.  Not a word of this to another soul, Ezra; but I’m not going to use you like a mail-carrier, but a friend.  After all, there are few in Opinquake, I suppose, but know I’d give my eyes for her, so there isn’t much use of my putting on secret airs.”

“I’m not a talker, and you might have sent your letter by a worse messenger’n me,” was the laconic reply.

Zeb had never written a love-letter, and was at a loss how to begin or end it.  But time pressed, and he had to say what was uppermost in his mind.  It ran as follows: 

“I don’t know how to write so as to give my words weight.  I cannot come home; I will not come as long as mother and the children can get on without me.  And men are needed here; men are needed.  The general fairly pleads with the soldiers to stay.  Stokes would stay if he could.  We’re almost driving him home.  I know you will be kind to him, and remember he has few to care for him.  I cannot speak for myself in person very soon, if ever.  Perhaps I could not if I stood before you.  You laugh at me; but if you knew how I love you and remember you, how I honor and almost worship you in my heart, you might understand me better.  Why is it strange I should be afraid of you?  Only God has more power over me than you.  Will you be my wife?  I will do anything to win you that you can ask.  Others will plead with you in person.  Will you let this letter plead for the absent?”

Zeb went to the captain’s quarters and got some wax with which to seal this appeal, then saw Stokes depart with the feeling that his destiny was now at stake.

Meanwhile Zeke Watkins, with a squad of homeward-bound soldiers, was trudging toward Opinquake.  They soon began to look into one another’s faces in something like dismay.  But little provision was in their wallets when they had started, for there was little to draw upon, and that furnished grudgingly, as may well be supposed.  Zeke had not cared.  He remembered the continuous feasting that had attended his journey to camp, and supposed that he would only have to present himself to the roadside farmhouses in order to enjoy the fat of the land.  This hospitality he proposed to repay abundantly by camp reminiscences in which it would not be difficult to insinuate that the hero of the scene was present.