Bad Hugh

"Perhaps he will speak to me. I'll wait," was the final decision, as,

rising from her sleepless pillow, she sat down in the gray dawn of the

morning and penned a hasty note, which she thrust into his hand at

parting, little dreaming how long a time would intervene ere they would

meet again.

He had not said to her or to his mother that he might join the army,

gathering so fast from every Northern city and hamlet; only Sam knew

this, and so the mother longing for her daughter was pleased rather than

surprised at his abrupt departure, bidding him Godspeed, and lading him

with messages of love for Adah and the little boy. Alice, too, tried to

smile as she said good-by, but it died upon her lips and a tear trembled

on her cheek, when Hugh dropped the little hand he never expected to

hold again just as he held it then.

Feeling intuitively that Irving and Alice would rather say their parting

words alone, Hugh drew his mother with him as he advanced into the midst

of the sobbing, howling negroes assembled to see him off. But Alice had

nothing to say which she would not have said in his presence. Irving

Stanley understood better than Hugh, and he merely raised her cold hand

to his lips, saying as he did so: "Just this once; I shall never kiss it again."

He was in the carriage when Hugh came up, and Alice stood leaning

against one of the tall pillars, a deep flush now upon her cheek, and

tears filling her soft blue eyes. In another moment the carriage was

rolling from the yard, neither Irving nor Hugh venturing to look back,

and both as by mutual consent avoiding the mention of Alice, whose name

was not spoken once during their journey together to Cincinnati, where

they parted company, Irving continuing his homeward route, while Hugh

stopped in the city to arrange a matter of business with his banker

there. It was not until Irving was gone and he alone in his room that he

opened the little note given him by Alice, the note which would tell him

of her approaching marriage, he believed. How then was he surprised when

he read: "DEAR HUGH: I have at last discovered the mistake under which, for

so many years, I have been laboring. It was not Irving Stanley who

saved me from the water, but your own noble self, and you have

generously kept silent all this time, permitting me to expend upon

another the gratitude due to you.

"Dear Hugh, I wish I had known earlier, or that you did not leave

us so soon. It seems so cold, thanking you on paper, but I have no

other opportunity, and must do it here.