“Annie, had I lived, I never could have toiled for you as I once did, for where the right arm, which has held your light form so often, used to be, there is nothing now but a scarred stump, and this is why I have not written. Does it make you sicken and shrink away from me? Don’t, Annie. Your crippled husband’s heart is as full of tenderness now as ever. I was too proud of my figure, Annie, and the thought that you might love me less when you knew how maimed I was, hurt more than the cold, sharp steel, cutting into my throbbing flesh. “And now, dear Annie, I come to the hardest part of all. I know just how you’ll start and shudder at what you deem so cruel a suggestion,—know just how keen the pang will be, for I have felt the same and my spirit well nigh fainted as I thought of the time when another’s caressess than mine would call the sweet love light to your eye and kindle the soft blushes on your cheek. Listen to me, Annie. You’ll be glad one day to remember that I told you what I did. You are young and beautiful, and though you do not believe it now, the time will surely come when my grave will not be visited as often as at first, and the flowers you will plant above me when next spring’s sun is shining will wither for want of care, and the rank grass growing there will not be trodden down by your dear little feet, for they will be waiting by another fireside than ours in the Hollow, and my Annie will bear another name than mine. Do you discredit me, darling? It will surely be, and I am willing that it should, but you will never know the anguish it costs me to be willing. It is the bitterest drop in all the bitter cup, but I drank it with tears and prayers, and now I can calmly say to you what I am saying,—can even from my death-bed give you to another, whoever he may be. You can never forget me, I know; never forget your soldier husband, who fell in his country’s cause, but by and by thoughts of him will cease to give you pain, and our short married life will seem like some far-off dream. “I cannot say how it would be with _me_ were you taken and I left, but I am much like other men, and judging from their example I should do just as they do, so if in after years another asks you, as I once did, to be his guiding star, don’t refuse for me. Think that from my low grave I bless you in your new relations, and will welcome you to Heaven all the same, though you come fettered and bound with other links than those my love has thrown around you.