“Army of Potomac, and about as licked out an army as you ever seen. To all it may concern, and ‘specially Miss Anny Graam. I send you my regrets greetin’, and hopin’ this will find you enjoying the same great blessin’. Burnside has made the thunderinest blunder, and more’n a million of our boys is dead before Fredericksburgh. Mr. Mathers was about riddled through, I guess, and the Corporal,—wall, may as well take it easy,—I fit for him like a tiger, till they nocked me endways, and I played dead to save my life. But the Corporal’s a goner,—took prisoner with an awful cut on his neck; and now what I’m going to tell you is this: the night before the battle I came upon him prayin’ like a priest, kneelin’ in an awful mudpuddle, and what he said was somethin’ about Heaven, and _Anny_, whitch, beggin’ your pardon, I think means you, and so I ast him in case of bad luck, if I should write and tell you. I don’t think he could have ben in a vary sperritual frame of mind, for he told me to mind my bisiness, but I don’t lay it up agin him, and when them too tall, lantern-jawed sons of Balam grabbed him as he was tryin’ to skedaddle with the blood a spirtin’ from his neck, I pitched inter ’em, and give ’em hale columby for a spell, till they nocked me flat and I made bleeve dead as I was tellin’ you. Don’t feel bad, Miss Graam. Trust luck and keep your powder dry, and mabby he’ll come back sometime. Yours to command, “BILL BAKER.” “Tell the old woman I’m well, but pretty well tuckered out.” “God soften the hearts of his captors. God keep him in safety!” Annie whispered, and then, as Mrs. Carleton came in, she passed the note to her, and tried to comfort the poor mother, who, in Rose’s absence, leaned on her as on a daughter. Annie seemed very near the sorrowing woman, who wept bitterly for her poor boy, and in the first hours of her sorrow she spoke out what was in her mind. “I believe Jimmie loved you, Annie, and that makes you very dear to me. We can mourn for him together, and, Annie, you will pray for him night and day, that God will bring him back to us.” Annie could only reply by pressing the hand which sought hers, for her heart was too full to speak. Had Jimmie been dead she would scarcely have mourned for him more deeply than she did now. The country was already rife with rumors of the sufferings endured by our prisoners, and death itself seemed almost preferable to months and years of privations and pain in the Southern prisons. “Sent to Richmond, and probably from thence further South, probably to Georgia.”