Could Hugh have seen Alice then, he would not for a moment have doubted the nature of her feelings towards himself. She did not cry out, nor faint, but her face turned white as the dress she wore, while her hands pressed so tightly together, that her nails left the impress in her flesh. “God keep him from danger and death,” she murmured; then, winding her arm around the stricken mother, she wiped her tears away; and to her moaning cry that she was left alone, replied, “Let me be your child till he returns, or, if he never does——” She could get no further, and sinking down beside Hugh’s mother, she laid her head on her lap, and wept bitterly. Alas, that scenes like this should be so common in our once happy land, but so it is. Mothers start with terror, and grow faint over the boy just enlisted for the war; then follow him with prayers and yearning love to the distant battle field; then wait and watch for tidings from him; and then too often read with streaming eyes and hearts swelling with agony, the fatal message which says _their boy is dead_. It was a sad day at Spring Bank when first the news of Hugh’s enlistment came, for Hugh seemed as really dead as if they heard the hissing shell or whizzing ball which was to bear his young life away. It was nearly two months since he left home, and he could find no trace of Adah, though searching faithfully for her, in conjunction with Murdoch and Dr. Richards, both of whom had joined him in New York. “If Murdoch cannot find her,” he wrote, “I am convinced no one can, and I leave the matter now to him, feeling that another duty calls me, the duty of fighting for my country.” It was just after the disastrous battle of Bull Run, when people were wild with excitement, and Hugh was thus borne with the tide, until he found himself enrolled as a private in a regiment of cavalry, gathering in one of the Northern States. There had been an instant’s hesitation, a clinging of the heart to the dear old home at Spring Bank, where his mother and Alice were; and then, with an eagerness which made his whole frame tremble, he had seized the pen, and written down his name, amid deafening cheers for the brave Kentuckian. This done, there was no turning back; nor did he desire it. It seemed as if he were made for war, so eagerly he longed to join the fray. Only one thing was wanting, and that was _Rocket_. He had tried the “Yankee horses,” as he called them, but found them far inferior to his pet. Rocket, he must have, and in his letter to his mother, he made arrangements for her to send him northward by a Versailles merchant, who he knew, was coming to New York.