"Well, Miss Baron, you must try to believe that we would not have left the dear originals of such pictures unless we had felt we must, and there let the question rest. Our lives are sweet to us, although we risk them, chiefly because so dear to those at home. Let the thought cheer you in your work that you are keeping tears from eyes as good and kind as your own. That's another reason why I showed you the likenesses." "It will be but another motive," she said. "A suffering man, whether friend or enemy, is enough." She smiled as she spoke, then picked her way across the wide barn floor and disappeared. Every eye followed her, pain all forgotten for the moment. "By G--d!" exclaimed a rough fellow, drawing his sleeve across his eyes, "I'm hard hit, but I'll crawl to and choke the first man who says a word she oughtn't to hear when she's around." "If you can keep your own tongue civil, Yarry, you'll have your hands full," said a comrade. "Well, I be blankety blank-blanked if that girl doesn't rout the devil out of a fellow, hoof and horns." "You're right, my man," said the Union captain, "and your feelings do you credit. Now I have a suggestion to make. Not one of us is capable of using a word before her that she shouldn't hear, if not out of our heads. We can pay her a better tribute than that. Let us decide to speak in her absence as if she were present. That's about all we can do in return for her kindness. She won't know the cost to us in breaking habits, but we will, and that's better. We all feel that we'd like to spill some more of our blood for the girl who fed Phillips yonder as if he were a baby. Well, let us do the only thing we can--speak as if our mothers heard us all the time, for this girl's sake." "I be blanked if I don't agree, and may the devil fly away with the man who doesn't," cried Yarry. "Ah, Yarry," said the captain, laughing, "you'll have the hardest row of any of us to hoe. We'll have to let you off for some slips." Then began among the majority a harder fight than that for life--a fight with inveterate habit, an effort to change vernacular, almost as difficult as the learning of a new language. For some time Miss Lou did not know nor understand. Word had been passed to other and smaller groups of the Union wounded in other buildings. The pledge was soon known as "A Northern Tribute to a Southern Girl." It was entered into with enthusiasm and kept with a pathetic effort which many will not understand. Yarry positively began to fail under the restraint he imposed upon himself. His wound caused him agony, and profanity would have been his natural expression of even slight annoyance. All day long grisly oaths rose to his lips. Now and then an excruciating twinge would cause a half-uttered expletive to burst forth like a projectile. A deep groan would follow, as the man became rigid in his struggle for self-control.