The tidings from her other friends were equally reassuring.  Their regiment had lost heavily, and Blauvelt had been made a captain almost in spite of himself, while Strahan was acting as lieutenant-colonel, since the officer holding that rank had been wounded.  There was a dash of sadness and tragedy in the journal which the two young men forwarded to her after they had been a few days in their old camp at Falmouth, but Strahan’s indomitable humor triumphed, and their crude record ended in a droll sketch of a plucked cock trying to crow.  She wrote letters so full of sympathy and admiration of their spirit that three soldiers of the army of the Potomac soon recovered their morale.

The month of May was passing in mocking beauty to those whose hopes and happiness were bound up in the success of the Union armies.  Not only had deadly war depleted Hooker’s grand army, but the expiration of enlistments would take away nearly thirty thousand more.  Mr. Vosburgh was aware of this, and he also found the disloyal elements by which he was surrounded passing into every form of hostile activity possible within the bounds of safety.  Men were beginning to talk of peace, at any cost, openly, and he knew that the Southern leaders were hoping for the beginning at any time of a counter-revolution at the North.  The city was full of threatening rumors, intrigues, and smouldering rebellion.

Marian saw her father overwhelmed with labors and anxieties, and letters from her friends reflected the bitterness then felt by the army because the North appeared so half-hearted.

“Mr. Merwyn, meanwhile,” she thought, “is interesting himself in landscape-gardening.  If he has one spark of manhood or courage he will show it now.”

The object of this reproach was living almost the life of a hermit at his country place, finding no better resource, in his desperate unrest and trouble, than long mountain rambles, which brought physical exhaustion and sleep.

He had not misunderstood Marian’s final words and manner.  Delicately, yet clearly, she had indicated the steps he must take to vindicate his character and win her friendship.  He felt that he had become pale, that he had trembled in her presence.  What but cowardice could explain his manner and account for his inability to confirm the good impression he had made by following the example of her other friends?  From both his parents he had inherited a nature sensitive to the last degree to any imputation of this kind.  To receive it from the girl he loved was a hundred-fold more bitter than death, yet he was bound by fetters which, though unseen by all, were eating into his very soul.  The proud Mrs. Merwyn was a slave-holder herself, and the daughter of a long line of slave-owners; but never had a bondsman been so chained and crushed as was her son.  For weeks he felt that he could not mingle with other men, much less meet the girl to whom manly courage was the corner-stone of character.