How little did those children dream of war, even when studying their history lessons!  Yet Albert Nichol now lay in the Wilderness jungle.  He had done much to make his little playmate proud of him.  The sturdy boy developed into a manly man.  When he responded to his country’s call and raised a company among his old friends and neighbors, Helen Kemble exulted over him tearfully.  She gave him the highest tribute within her power and dearest possession—­her heart.  She made every campaign with him, following him with love’s untiring solicitude through the scenes he described, until at last the morning paper turned the morning sunshine into mockery and the songs of the birds into dirges.  Captain Nichol’s name was on the list of the killed.

With something of the same jealousy, developed and intensified, which he had experienced while watching Albert glide away on the ice with the child adored in a dumb, boyish way, Hobart had seen his old schoolmate depart for the front.  Then his rival took the girl from him; now he took her heart.  Martine’s lameness kept him from being a soldier.  He again virtually stood chilled on the bank, with a cold, dreary, hopeless feeling which he believed would benumb his life.  He did not know, he was not sure that he had lost Helen beyond hope, until those lurid days when men on both sides were arming and drilling for mutual slaughter.  She was always so kind to him, and her tones so gentle when she spoke, that in love’s fond blindness he had dared to hope.  He eventually learned that she was only sorry for him.  He did not, could not, blame her, for he needed but to glance at Nichol’s stalwart form, and recall the young soldier’s record, in order to know that it would be strange indeed if the girl had chosen otherwise.  He would have been more than human if there had not been some bitterness in his heart; but he fought it down honestly, and while pursuing his peaceful avocations engaged in what he believed would be a lifelong battle.  He smiled at the girl across the garden fence and called out his cheery “Good-morning.”  He was her frequent companion by the fireside or on the piazza, according to the season; and he alone of the young men was welcome, for she had little sympathy for those who remained at home without his excuse.  He was so bravely her friend, keeping his great love so sternly repressed that she only felt it like a genial warmth in his tones and manner, and believed that he was becoming in truth what he seemed, merely a friend.

On that terrible May morning he was out in the garden and heard her wild, despairing cry as she read the fatal words.  He knew that a heavy battle had been begun, and was going down to the gate for his paper, which the newsboy had just left.  There was no need of opening it, for the bitter cry he had heard made known to him the one item of intelligence compared with which all else for the time became insignificant.  Was it the Devil that inspired a great throb of hope in his heart?  At any rate he thought it was, and ground his heel into the gravel as if the serpent’s head was beneath it, then limped to Mr. Kemble’s door.