"Sergeant, I read that letter. It was the dutifulest letter a woman ever wrote. But--but--don't you know a woman can marry a feller, an' be dutiful an' patient, an' all the time her heart's on fire an' eatin' itself away in grief 'cause she's married the wrong feller?" He paused a moment, and then broke out desperately: "And that's the way with Mary. She wasn't but seventeen when I married her. She was too young--she didn't know. An' here I am a mock an' a misery. I ain't fit to earn a livin' for her. She'll faint dead away when she sees this here." He struck his disfigured face savagely, and did not wince with the pain. "It's better for her, an' God knows it's better for me to die. After I got that letter I felt sorter low. The doctors kem in an' talked about my havin' flutterin's at the heart, an' givin' me brandy. Did you ever hear o' brandy curing a broken heart? Sergeant, I tell you I've got a blow worser'n that bullet that shot my jaw away. I didn't mean never to let her know I was alive unless I got cured an' made a man of again, and--and--" Kaintuck dropped weakly down on the side of the bed. The sergeant then noticed that he was of a deathly color, and scarcely able to sit up, much less to stand. But the sergeant too wore a strange look, and his strong hands clinched behind his back were trembling. Kaintuck, fumbling in the breast of his butternut shirt, produced a little packet done up in white letter-paper, on which something was written, and took from it a tress of chestnut hair, soft and long. "This writin' is hers," he said, with a curious accent of pride, "and her hair is as long as this all over her head--and wavy." The sergeant could not read the words because they danced before his eyes, but he knew the handwriting, and on his own breast reposed a lock of hair that matched the one poor Kaintuck showed with such pride. Kaintuck, in the frenzy of his suppressed excitement, did not notice the sergeant's pallor and agitation. He was wrestling furiously and blindly with his fate. "Now don't you see," he asked, "why I don't want her to come? I ain't got long to live. What's the use o' dragging her through it? An' I can tell you, sergeant, it would be a heap easier to die now than before I seen her an' the boy."