It was a clear starlight night, and she leaned many times from her open window and looked up at the kindly eyes keeping watch above her. But she did not see the figure coming down the street and up the walk to their own door; the figure of a worn-out soldier, who from the prison at Salisbury had escaped to Tennessee, and had come from thence straight on until the midnight train dropped him at the Rockland station. The light was behind her, and Will saw _her_ distinctly as he went up the avenue, and he stopped a moment to look at her. She was very pale, and much thinner than when he saw her last, but never, even on her bridal day, had she seemed so beautiful to him as then, when leaning from her window, and apparently listening for something. It was the sound of his footsteps as he came up the walk which had attracted her attention, and when it ceased so suddenly as he stopped under the trees, she felt a momentary pang of fear, for burglars had been very common in the town that summer. Possibly this was one of the robbers, and Rose was thinking of alarming the house, when the figure emerged from under the shadow of the trees, and came directly up beneath the window, while a voice which made Rose’s blood curdle in her veins, called softly, “Rose, darling, is it you?” Had the dead come back to life? Was that her husband’s voice, and that his step in the lower hall? Rose had supposed the front door bolted. She had not heard it open, and now, when the steps sounded upon the stairs, her heart gave one throb of fear, as all the old superstitious stories of New England lore rushed to her mind. Perhaps on this anniversary of his death he _had_ come back to see her. And perhaps—— Rose did not finish the sentence, for the opening of her own door disclosed the wasted figure of a man wearing the army blue, his face very pale, but lighted up with perfect joy as he stretched his arms toward the shrinking woman by the window, and said: “Come to me, darling; I am no ghost.” Then she went to him, but uttered no sound. Her heart was too full for that, and seemed bursting from her throat as she laid her head upon the bosom of her husband, and felt his arms around her waist and neck. Her stillness frightened him, it was so unlike her, and lifting her from the floor, he took her in his lap, and said to her: “Speak to me, Rose. Let me hear your voice once more. You thought I was dead, and you’ve been so sorry.” “Yes, killed at Gettysburgh,” came gaspingly at last; and then a storm of tears and kisses fell upon Will’s face, and Rose’s arms were thrown about his neck as she tried to tell him how great was her joy to have him back again. “I have been so lonely,” she said, “for everybody is gone. Jimmie and Annie, and poor Tom, too, is a prisoner at last, so mother and I are all alone, except”—— Just then it occurred to her that her husband had no suspicion of the great joy in store for him.