“You have hurt me cruelly, Annie Graham, for I believed you cared for me; but I cannot hate you for it, though I tried to do so all night long. I love you just the same as ever, and always shall. Remember your promise to come to me when I am sick, and let me kiss you once for the sake of what I hoped might be.” She did not refuse his request; and when at last he left her there was a red spot on her cheek where Jimmie Carleton’s lips had been. From her window she watched him going down the walk; and while with widow Simms he waited at the depot for the coming of the train, she on her knees was praying for him and his safety, just as, eighteen months before, she prayed for George when he was going from her. CHAPTER XXIII. TOM AND JIMMIE. Jimmie’s journey was performed in safety, and he won golden opinions from his traveling companion, for whom he had cared as kindly as if it had been his mother instead of the “crabbed widow” in her eternal leghorn, with the vail of faded green. He had left her at one of the hospitals in Washington, where she was to begin her work as nurse, and hastened on to join his regiment. Captain Carleton was glad to welcome back the brother whom he had missed so much, but he saw that something was wrong; and that night, as they sat around the tent fire, he asked what it was, and why the face, usually so bright and cheerful, seemed so sober and sad. Tom had made minute inquiries concerning his mother, and Rose, and Susan Simms, and even poor old Mrs. Baker. But not a word of Annie. He could not speak of her, with that unfinished letter lying in his little travelling writing-case,—that letter commencing “My dear Mrs. Graham,” and over the wording of which Tom had spent more time by far than he did over the first epistle sent to Mary Williams. That had been dashed off in all the heat of a young man’s first ardent passion, just as Jimmie two weeks ago would have written to Annie. But Tom was eight years older than Jimmie. His first love had met its full fruition, and Mary, the object, was dead. Tom had always been old for his years. He looked, and seemed, and felt, full forty now, save when he thought of Annie, who was only twenty-one. Then he went back to thirty-two, glad that he had numbered no more birth-days. He had made up his mind to write to her. A friendly letter the first should be, he said,—a letter merely asking if she would correspond with him, and hinting at the interest he had felt in her ever since he saw how much she was to Rose, and how constant were her labors for the suffering soldiers. If her answer was favorable, he should ere long ask her to be his wife, and this is the way he took to win the woman whose name he would not mention to his brother. He had been a little uneasy when Jimmie first went home, for he knew how popular the wayward youth was with all the ladies; but as Rose had never written a word to strengthen him in his fears, he had