Bad Hugh

The second disastrous battle at Bull Run was over, and the shadow of a

summer night wrapped the field of carnage in darkness. Thickly upon the

battlefield lay the dead and dying, the sharp, bitter cries of the

latter rising on the night wind, and adding tenfold to the horror of the

scene. In the woods, not very far away, more than one brave soldier was

weltering in his lifeblood, just where, in his rapid flight, he had

fallen, the grass his pillow, and the leafy branches of the forest trees

his only covering.

Side by side, and near to a running brook, two wounded men were lying,

or rather one was supporting the other and trying to stanch the purple

gore, pouring darkly from a fearful bullet wound in the region of the

heart. The stronger of the two, he who wore a major's uniform, had come

accidentally upon the other, writhing in agony, and muttering at

intervals snatches of the prayer with which he once had been familiar,

and which seemed to bring Lily back to him again, just as she was when

in the attic chamber she made him kneel by her, and say "Our Father." He

tried to say it now, and the whispered words caught the ear of Irving

Stanley, arresting his steps at once.

"Poor fellow! it's gone hard with you," he said, kneeling by the

sufferer, whom he recognized as the deserter, Dr. Richards, who had

returned to his allegiance, had craved forgiveness for his sins, and

been restored to the ranks, discharging his duties faithfully, and

fighting that day with a zeal and energy which did much in reinstating

him in the good opinion of those who witnessed his daring bravery.

But the doctor's work was done, and never from his lips would Lily know

how well his promise had been kept. Giddy with pain and weak from the

loss of blood, he had groped his way through the woods, fighting back

the horrid certainty that to-morrow's sun would not rise for him, and

sinking at length exhausted upon the grass, whose freshness was now

defaced by the blood which poured so freely from his wound.

It was thus that Irving Stanley found him, starting at first as from a

hissing shell, and involuntarily clasping his hand over the place where

lay a little note, received a few days before, a reply to the earnest

declaration of love he had at last written to his sister's governess,

Maria Gordon. There was but one alternative, and Adah met it resolutely,

though every fiber of her heart throbbed with keen agony as she told to

Irving Stanley the story of her life. She was a wife, a mother, the

sister of Hugh Worthington, they said, the Adah for whom Dr. Richards

had sought so long in vain, and for whom Murdock, the wicked father, was

seeking still for aught she knew to the contrary. Even the story of the

doctor's secretion in the barn at Sunnymead was confessed. Nothing was

withheld except the fact that even as he professed to love her, so she

in turn loved him, or had done so before she knew it was a sin. Surprise

had, for a few moments, stifled every other emotion, and Irving Stanley

had sat like one suddenly bereft of motion, when he read who Maria

Gordon was. Then came the bitter thought that he had lost her, mingled

with a deep feeling of resentment toward the man who had so cruelly

wronged the gentle girl, and who alone stood between him and happiness.

For Irving Stanley could overlook all the rest. His great warm heart,

so full of kindly sympathy and generous charity for all mankind could

take to its embrace the fair, sweet woman he had learned to love so

much, and be a father to her little boy, as if it had been his own. But

this might not be. There was a mighty obstacle in the way, and feeling

that it mattered little now whether he ever came from the field alive,

Irving Stanley, with a whispered prayer for strength to bear and do

right, had hidden the letter in his bosom, and then, when the hour of

conflict came, plunged into the thickest of the fight with a

fearlessness born of keen and recent disappointment, which made life

less valuable than it had been before.