University of Virginia Library

46. CHAPTER XLVI.
PRISONERS OF WAR.

THE heat, the smoke, the thunder of the battle
were over, and the fields of Gettysburg were
drenched with human blood and covered with
the dead and dying. The contest had been
fearful, and its results carried sorrow and anguish to

many a heart waiting for tidings from the war, and looking
so anxiously for the names of the loved ones who, on
the anniversary of the day which saw our nation's Independence,
lay upon the hills and plains of Gettysburg,
their white faces upturned to the summer sky, and wet
with the rain drops, which, like tears for the noble dead,
the pitying clouds had shed upon them. And nowhere,
perhaps, was there a whiter face or a more anxious heart
than at the farm-house, where both Helen and her
mother-in-law were spending the hot July days. Since
the Christmas eve when Helen had watched her husband
going from her across the wintry snow, he had not been
back, though several times he had made arrangements to
do so. Something, however, had always happened to
prevent. Once it was sickness which kept him in bed
for a week or more; again his regiment was ordered to
advance, and the third time it was sent on with others to
repel the invaders from Pennsylvanian soil. Bravely
through each disappointment Helen bore herself, but her
cheek always grew paler and her eye darker in its hue
when the evening papers came, and she read what progress
our soldiery had made, feeling that a battle was inevitable,
and praying so earnestly that Mark Ray might
be spared. Then, when the battle was over and up the
northern hills came the dreadful story of thousands and
thousands slain, there was a fearful look in her eye, and
her features were rigid as marble, while the quivering
lips could scarcely pray for the great fear tugging at her
heart. Mark Ray was not with his men when they came
from that terrific onslaught. A dozen had seen him fall,
struck down by a rebel ball, and that was all she heard
for more than a week, when there came another relay of
news.

Captain Mark Ray was a prisoner of war, with several
of his own company. An inmate of Libby Prison and
a sharer from choice of the apartment where his men
were confined. As an officer he was entitled to better
quarters; but Mark Ray had a large, warm heart, and he
would not desert those who had been so faithful to him,
and so he took their fare, and by his genial humor and
unwavering cheerfulness kept many a heart from fainting,
and made the prison life more bearable than it could

have been without him. To young Tom Tubbs, who had
enlisted six months before, he was a ministering angel,
and many times the poor homesick boy crept to the side
of his captain, and laying his burning head in his lap,
wept himself to sleep and dreamed he was at home again.
The horrors of that prison life have never been told, but
Mark bore up manfully, suffering less in mind, perhaps,
than did the friends at home, who lived, as it were, a
thousand years in that one brief summer while he remained
in Richmond.

At last, as the frosty days of October came on, they
began to hope he might be exchanged, and Helen's face
grew bright again, until one day there came a soiled,
half-worn letter, in Mark's own hand-writing. It was
the first word received from him since his capture in July,
and with a cry of joy Helen snatched it from Uncle Ephraim,
for she was still at the farm-house, and sitting down
upon the doorstep just where she had been standing,
read the words which Mark had sent to her. He was
very well, he said, and had been all the time, but he
pined for home, longing for the dear girl-wife never so
dear as now, when separated by so many miles, with
prison walls on every side, and an enemy's line between
them.

“But be of good cheer, darling,” he wrote, “I shall
come back to you some time, and life will be all the
brighter for what you suffer now. I am so glad my
darling consented to be my wife, even though I could stay
with her but a moment. The knowing you are really
mine makes me happy even here, for I think of you by
day, and in my dreams I always hold you in my arms
and press you to my heart.”

A hint he gave of being sent further south, and then
hope died out of Helen's heart.

“I shall never see him again,” she said despairingly;
and when the message came that Mark had been removed,
and that too just at the time when an exchange
was constantly expected, she gave him up as lost, feeling
almost as much windowed as Katy in her weeds.

Slowly the winter passed away, and the country was
rife with stories of our men, daily dying by hundreds,
while those who survived were reduced to maniacs or

imbeciles. And Helen, as she listened, grew nearly
frantic with the sickening suspense. She did not know
now where her husband was. He had made several attempts
to escape, and with each failure had been removed
to safer quarters, so that his chances for being exchanged
seemed very far away. Week after week, month after
month passed on, until came the memorable battle of the
Wilderness, when Lieutenant Bob, as yet unharmed,
stood bravely in the thickest of the fight, his tall figure
towering above the rest, and his soldier's uniform buttoned
over a dark tress of hair, and a face like Bell
Cameron's. Lieutenant Bob had taken two or three furloughs;
but the one which had left the sweetest, pleasantest
memory in his heart, was that of the autumn before,
when the crimson leaves of the maple, and the
golden tints of the beech, were burning themselves out
on the hills of Silverton, where his furlough was mostly
passed, and where with Bell Cameron he scoured the
length and breadth of Uncle Ephraim's farm, now stopping
by the shore of Fairy Point, and again sitting for
hours on a ledge of rocks, far up the hill, where beneath
the softly whispering pines, nodding above their heads,
Bell gathered the light-brown cones, and said to him the
words he had so thirsted to hear.

Much of Bell's time was passed with Katy, at the farm-house,
and here Lieutenant Reynolds found her, accepting
readily of Uncle Ephraim's hearty invitation to
remain, and spending his entire vacation there with the
exception of three days, given to his family. Perfectly
charmed with quaint Aunt Betsy, he flattered and courted
her almost as much as he did Bell, but did not take
her with him in his long rambles over the hills, or sit
with her at night alone in the parlor until the clock
struck twelve—a habit which Aunt Betsy greatly disapproved,
but overlooked for this once, seeing, as she
said, that

“The young leftenant was none of her kin, and Isabel
only a little.”

Those were halcyon days which Robert passed at Silverton;
but one stood out prominently before him,
whether sitting before his camp-fire or plunging into
the battle; and that the one when, casting aside all

pride and foolish theories, Bell Cameron freely acknowledged
her love for the man to whom she had been so long
engaged, and paid him back the kisses she had before refused
to give.

“I shall be a better soldier for this,” Robert had said, as
he guided her down the steep ledge of rocks, and with her
hand in his, walked slowly back to the farm-house, which,
on the morrow, he left to take again his place in the
army.

There were no more furloughs for him after that; and
the winter passed away, bringing the spring again, when
came that battle in the Wilderness, where, like a hero, he
fought until, becoming separated from his comrades, he
fell into the enemy's hands; and two days after, there
sped along the telegraphic wires to New York,

“Lieutenant Robert Reynolds, captured the first day
of the battle.”

Afterwards came news that Andersonville was his destination,
together with many others made prisoners that
day.

“It is better than being shot, and a great deal better
than being burned, as some of the poor wretches were,”
Juno said, trying to comfort Bell, who doubted a little
her sister's word.

True there was now the shadow of a hope that he
might return; but the probabilities were against it; and
Bell's face grew almost as white as Helen's, while her eyes
acquired that restless, watchful, anxious look which has
crept into the eyes of so many sorrowing women, looking
away to the southward, where the dear ones were dying.