“I wish I had not come. I’m always doing wrong when I mean to do the best. Oh, I wish the war had never been, and I don’t believe Isaac is so sick. Jimmie has no right to judge. He don’t know.” Rose’s distress was too genuine not to touch the widow, who tried to appear calm and unconcerned, and even said something kind of Jimmie, who had so generously preferred Eli to himself. But there was a restraint over everything, and, after a few awkward attempts at something like natural conversation, Rose bade a hasty good-bye, and went out from the house to which she had brought more sorrow than joy. CHAPTER XXI. “NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD.” The sick boy whispered the words a great many times to himself, as with his face to the wall, where neither his mother nor Susan could see it, he thought of what Rose had read, and wondered if it were true. He was not afraid to die. He had been very near death once before, and had not shrunk from meeting it _as_ death. It was only the dying from home he had dreaded so much, asking to live till he could see his mother again, and the grass growing by the cottage door, and the violets by the well. And God had taken him at his word. He had lived to see his mother, to feel the touch of her rough hands upon his hair; to hear her voice, always kind to him, calling him her “Iky boy;” to see the green grass by the door, and the violets by the well. But this, alas! did not suffice. He wanted to live longer,—live to be a man, like Eli and John; live to do good; live to take care of his mother; live to hear the notes of victory borne on the northern breeze, as the Federal Flag floated again over land and sea. All this was worth living for, and Isaac was young to die,—only nineteen, and looking three years younger. It was very hard, and the dark eyelashes closed tightly to keep back the tears as the white lips tried to pray, “Thy will be done.” That was what they meant to utter, but there came instead the first words of the prayer the Saviour taught, “Our Father!” that was all; but the very name of father brought a deep peace into Isaac’s heart.