University of Virginia Library

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26. CHAPTER XXVI.
COURSE OF EVENTS.

WITH a howl of despair, Mrs. Baker came rushing
into the kitchen of the Mather mansion, one
morning in November, startling Annie with her
vehemence as she thrust into her hand a dirty, half-worn
envelope, which she said was from Bill, who had been
missing since August, and who, it now appeared, was at
Andersonville.

“Might better be dead,” his mother said, and then she
explained that the letter she brought Annie had come in
one to herself received that morning from Bill.

How he ever got it through the lines was a mystery
which he did not explain; nor did Annie care, inasmuch
as it brought news direct from Jimmie. He had written
to her with the pencil and on the sheet of paper Bill had
brought him, for Bill Baker was employed outside the
prison walls, and allowed many privileges which were
denied to the poor wretches who crowded that swampy
pen. In short, Bill had taken the Confederate oath,—
“had done some tall swearin',” as he wrote to Annie,
giving as an excuse for the treasonable act, “that he
couldn't stan' the racket” in that horrible place, where
twenty thousand human beings were crowded together
in a space of twenty-five acres, and part of that a marshy
swamp, teeming with filth and scum, and hideous living
things. Another reason, too, Bill gave, and that was
pity for the “Corp'ral,” to whom he could occasionally
take little extras, and whom he would have scarcely
recognized, he said, so worn and changed had he become
from his long imprisonment.

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“I mistrusted he was there,” Bill wrote; “and so when me
and and some other fellow-travellers was safely landed in purgatory,
I went on an explorin' tower to find him. But you bet it
want so easy gettin through that crowd. Why, the camp-meetin'
they had in the Fair Grounds in Rockland, when Marm Freeman
bust her biler hollerin,' was nothin' to the piles of ragged, dirty, hungry-lookin'
dogs; some standin' up, some lyin' down, and all lookin'
as if they was on their last legs. Right on a little sand-bank, and so
near the dead line that I wonder he didn't get shot, I found the Corp'ral,
with his trouses tore to tatters, and lookin' like the old gal's
rag-bag that hangs in the suller-way. Didn't he cry, though, when
I hit him a kelp on the back, and want there some tall cryin' done by
both of us as we sat there flat on the sand, with the hot sun pourin'
down on us, and the sweat and the tears runnin' down his face, as
he told me all he'd suffered. It made my blood bile. I've had a
little taste of Libby, and Bell Isle, too; but they can't hold a candle
to this place. Miss Graam, you are the good sort, kinder pius like;
but I'll be hanged if I don't bleeve you'll justify me in the thumpin'
lies I told the Corp'ral that day, to keep his spirits up. Says he,
`Have you ever ben to Rockland since Fredericksburg?' and then
I tho't in a minute of that nite in the woods when he prayed about
Anny; and ses I to myself, `The piusest lie you ever told will be
that you have been home, and seen Miss Graam, with any other
triflin' additions you may think best;' so I told him I had ben hum
on a furbelow, as the old gal (meanin' my mother) calls it. And I
seen her, too, says I, Miss Graam, and she talked an awful sight
about you, I said, when you orto have seen him shiver all over as he
got up closer to me, and asked, `What did she say?' Then I went
on romancin', and told him how you spent a whole evenin' at the ole
hut, talkin' about him, and how sorry you was for him, and couldn't
git your natural sleep for thinkin' of him, and how, when I came
away, you said to me on the sly, `William, if you ever happen to
meet Mr. Carleton, give him Anny Graam's love, and tell him she
means it.' Great Peter! I could almost see the flesh come back to
his bones, and his eyes had the old look in 'em, as he liked to of
hugged me to death. I'd done him a world of good, he said, and for
some days he seemed as chipper as you please; but nobody can stan'
a diet of raw meal and the nastiest watter that ever run; and ses I
to myself, Corp'ral will die as sure as thunder if somethin' don't

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turn up; and so, when I got the hang of things a little, and seen
how the macheen was worked, sez I, `I'll turn Secesh, though I hate
'em as I do pizen.' They was glad enuff to have me, bein' I'm a
kind of carpenter and jiner, and they let me out, and I went to work
for the Corp'ral. I'll bet I told a hundred hes, fust and last, if I did
one. I said he was at heart Secesh; that he was in the rebel army,
and I took him prisoner at Manassas, which, you know was true.
Then I said his sweetheart, meanin' you, begging your pardon, got
up a row, and made him jine the Federals, and promise never to go
agin the flag, and that's how he come to be nabbed up at Fredericksburg.
I said 'twan't no use to try to make him swear, for he thought
more of his gal's good opinion than he did of liberty, and I set you
up till I swan if I bleeve you'd a knowed yourself, and every one of
them fellers was ready to stan' by you, and two of 'em drinked your
helth with the wust whisky I ever tasted. One of 'em asked me if I
was a fair specimen of the Northern Army, and I'll be darned if I
didn't tell him no, for I was ashamed to have 'em think the Federals
was all like me. I guess, though, they liked me some; anyway, they
let me carry something to the Corp'ral every now and then, and I
bleeve he'd die if I didn't. I've smuggled him in some paper and a
pencil, and he is going to wright to you, and I shall send it, no matter
how. The rebs won't see it, and I guess it's pretty sure to go
safe. I must stop now, and wright to the old woman.

“Yours to command,

“William Baker, Esquare.”

It was with great difficulty that Annie could decipher
the badly-written scrawl; but she made it out at last,
and then took Jimmie's letter next, shuddering as she
saw in it marks of the horrors which Bill had described
but faintly, and which were fully corroborated by Jimmie
himself.

“My dear Annie,” he wrote, “I do not know that this letter will
ever reach you. I have but little hope that it will. Still it is worth
trying for, and so here in this terrible place, whose horrors no pen
or tongue can adequately describe, I am writing to you, who I know
think sometimes of the poor wretch starving and dying by inches in
Andersonville. Oh, Annie, you can never know what I have suffered

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from hunger and thirst, and exposure and filth, which makes my
very blood curdle and creep, and from that weary homesickness
which more than aught else kills the poor boys around me. When
I first came here I thought I could not endure it, and though I knew
I was not prepared, I used to wish that I might die; but a little
drummer boy from Michigan, who took to me from the first, said his
prayers one night beside me, and the listening to him carried me
back to you, who, I felt sure, prayed for me each day. And so hope
came back again, with a desire to live and see your dear face once
more. Mylittle drummer boy, Johnny, was all the world to me, and
when he grew too sick to sit or stand, I held his poor head in my lap,
and gave up my rations to him, for he was almost famished, and ate
eagerly whatever was brought to us. We used to say the Lord's
Prayer together every night, when a certain star appeared, which he
playfully called his `mother,' saying it was her eye watching over
him. It was a childish fancy, but we grow childish here, and I, too,
have given that star a name. I call it `Annie,' and I watch its coming
as eagerly as did the little boy, who died just as the star reached
the zenith and was shining down upon him. His head was in my
lap, and all there was left of my coat I made into a pillow for him,
and held him till he died. His mother's address is —, Michigan.
Write to her, Annie, and tell her how Johnny died in the firm
hope of meeting her again in heaven. Tell her he did not suffer
much pain,—only a weakness, which wasted his life away. Tell her
the keepers were kind to him, and brought him ice-water several
times. Tell her, too, of the star at which he gazed so long as he had
strength.

“It was all the companion I had after he was gone until Bill
Baker came. I shall never forget that day. I had crawled up to
my sand bank, and drawn my rags around me, and was beginning
to wish again that I could die, when a broad hand was laid upon my
shoulder, and a voice which was music to me then, if it never had
been before, said to me cheerily, `Hallo, old Corp'ral! Such are
the chances of war! Give us your fist!' But when he saw what a
sorry, jaded wretch I was, his chin began to quiver, and we cried together
like two great babies as we were.

“Oh, Annie, was it a lie Bill Baker told me, or did you really send
me your love, and say that you meant it? He told me such a story,
and I grew better in a moment. Have you relented, and if I could
ask you again the question I asked a year ago, when we sat together

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beneath the moonlight, would you tell me yes? Darling Annie, Andersonville
is not so terrible since I am kept up by that hope. I do
not mind now if my shoes and stockings are all gone, and my
trowsers nearly so, and I watch for that star so eagerly, and make
believe that it is you, and when the dark clouds obscure it, and the
rain is falling upon my unsheltered head, I say that it is Annie's
tears, and do not mind that either. I pray, too, Annie,—pray with
my heart, I hope, though my prayers have more to do with you than
myself.

“Bill Baker said he should write and tell you about his taking
the oath, which I believe he did almost solely for my sake, and greatly
have I been benefited by it. Rough as he is, and disgusting at times,
he seems to have gained friends outside, and he does us many a kindness,
confining his attentions mostly to me, who am his especial
care. It is a strange Providence that he who took me a prisoner at
Bull Run and annoyed me so terribly, should now be caring for me
here at Andersonville, and literally keeping the life within me, for I
should die without him.

“I have not written half I want to say, but my paper is nearly
used up, and not one word have I said to mother or Rose. Tell
them they would not know me now, and tell them, too, that in my
dreams, when I am not with you, I am with them, and mother's face
is like an angel's, while Rose's sparkling beauty makes my heart
beat just as it used to beat when I first began to realize what a darling
sister I had. Dear Annie, you did send that message by Bill
Baker, I will believe, and thus believing, shall gain strength maybe
to bear up until the day of release.

“Good-bye, my darling. From my crowded, filthy, terrible prison
I send you a loving good-bye.”

Notwithstanding the sickening details of this letter the
day succeeding its receipt was a brighter one at the Mather
house than the inmates had known for a long time.
Jimmie was still alive, and with Bill Baker's care he
might survive the horrors of Andersonville and come back
to them again. Annie showed both letters to Mrs Carleton,
who, when she read them, wound her arms around
Annie's neck and whispered, “Is it wrong for me to be

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Annie could not tell. She was not sorry that Jimmie
should think of her as he did, and that night when the
stars came out in the sky she looked tearfully up at them,
wondering which was the one watched for by the childish
young man, and the little boy who died. Mrs. Carleton
had taken it for granted that if Jimmie came back Annie
would be her daughter, and she clung to her with a love
and tenderness second only to what she felt for Rose.
Poor Rose! She had listened with some degree of interest
to such portions of Jimmie's letter as Annie chose to
read to her, but it had no power to rouse her from the
state of apathy into which she had fallen. She never
smiled now, and rarely spoke except to answer a question,
but sat all day by the window in her own room, and looked
away to the southward, where all her thoughts were
centered. It was very strange that nothing could be
heard of her husband except that he was shot down dead.
A dozen corroborated that fact, but his body had not
been found on the field, nor was any mention ever made
of him in any official accounts. Once Rose had been
startled from her stupor by a soldier, who pretended to
have seen her husband in one of the Southern prisons,
but a closer examination proved that the man was intoxicated,
and had told what he did in the hope that money
might be given him for the intelligence, and then Rose
sank back into her former condition, the same hopeless
look in her eyes which had been there from the moment
she heard her husband's name among the killed, and the
same look of anguish upon her face which never relaxed
a muscle, as she watched indifferently the preparations
made by her mother and Annie for an event which under

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“It is your baby, Rose; born last night. Don't you remember
it,—a beautiful little boy, with his father's look
in his eyes, and Jimmie's dimple in his chin?”

Annie hoped, by mentioning both the father and Jimmie,
to awaken some interest in the little mother, whose
eyes grew larger, and rounder, and brighter, as she whispered:

“My baby, I can't understand. It is all so strange and
mysterious. How came I with a baby, Annie? Bring it
to me, please.”

They brought it to her, and laid it in her arms, and
then stood watching her as the first tokens of the mother's
love came over her face and crept into her eyes, which
gradually began to fill with tears, until, at last, a storm
of sobs and moans burst forth, as Rose rocked to and fro,
whispering to her child:

“Poor darling! to be born without a father, when he
would have been so proud of his boy. Poor, murdered
Will! Poor, fatherless baby! I am glad God gave you
to me. I did not deserve it. I've been so thoughtless
and wicked, but I will be better now. Dear little baby,
we will grow good together, so as to go some day where
papa has gone.”

She would not let them take the child from her. It
was hers, she said. God had sent it to make her better,

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“Will you call your baby, William?” And she replied:

“No; there is but one Willie for me, and he is in
Heaven. Baby will be called for brother Jimmie.”

And so one bright Sunday morning in March, when St.
Luke's was decked with flowers from the Mather hot-house,
and the children of the Sunday School sang their
Easter carols, Rose Mather, in her widow's weeds, went
up the aisle, with her mother, Annie, and brother Tom,
the latter of whom gave her bright-eyed, beautiful boy to
the rector, who baptized him “James Carleton.” And
all through the congregation there ran a thrill of pity
for the widowed mother, whose face, though it had lost
some of its brilliant color, was more beautiful than ever,
for there was shining all over it the light of a new joy,
the peace which comes from sins forgiven, and, after the
baptism was over and the morning service read, Rose
knelt with her mother, brother, and Annie, to receive,
for the first time, the precious symbols of a Saviour's dying
love.

Rose had ceased to oppose Annie in her wish to join
Mrs. Simms, who was then at Annapolis; and when Tom,
a few days after the baptism, went back again, Annie
would go with him as a regular hospital nurse.

It might be that Jimmie would be among the number
of skeletons sent up to “God's land,” as the poor fellows
called it; and Annie's heart throbbed with the pleasure it
would be to minister to him, to call the life back to his

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“Something tells me you will find my boy,” she said;
“and if you do, tell him how freely I give him this little
Lulu, and God bless you both!”

A few weeks later, and news came to the Mather House
that when the battle of the Wilderness was over, Captain
Tom Carleton was not with his handful of men who came
from the field. “A prisoner of war,” was the next report,
and then, as if her last hope had been taken from her,
Mrs. Carleton broke down entirely, and, secluding herself
from the world without, sat down in her desolation,
mourning and praying for her two boys,—one a prisoner
in Andersonville, and one in Columbia.