“If the body you bring back has my George’s heart within it, I shall love you just the same as I do now,” and with her fair head lying on his bosom, Annie wept piteously. Not till then had she realized what it was to let him go. She had become somewhat accustomed to thinking of it,—accustomed to seeing him pass in and out, dressed in his stylish uniform, which made him look so handsome, and then she had hoped the regiment would not be ordered for a long, long time, never perhaps; but now that dream was over; the dreaded hour had come, and for a moment Annie felt herself too weak to meet it. Through the livelong night she had prayed, or if perchance sleep for a moment shut the swollen lids, the lips had moved in prayer that her husband might come back to her again, or failing to do so, that he might grasp, even at the eleventh hour, the Christian’s faith, and so go to the Christian’s home, where they would meet once more. She had given him her little Bible, all pencil-marked and worn with daily usage,—the one she read when first the spirit taught her the meaning of its great mysteries,—and George had promised he would read it every day,—had said that when he went to battle he would place it next his heart, a talisman to shield him from the bullets of the foe. And Annie, smiling through her tears, pointed him again to the only One who could stand between him and death, asking that when he was far away, he would remember what she said, and pray to the God she honored. “It’s time, now, darling,” he said, at last, as he heard in the distance the beat of the drum. But the clinging arms refused to leave his neck, and the quivering lips pressed so constantly to his, murmured: “Wait a little minute more. ’Tis the last, you know.” Again the drum-beat was heard mingled with the shrill notes of the fife; the soldiers were marching down the street, and he must go, but oh, who can tell of the love, the pain, the grief, the tears mingled with that parting,—or the agony it cost poor Annie to take her arms from off his neck, to feel him putting her away, to hear him going from the room, across the threshold, down the walk, through the gate, and know that he was gone. As a child in peril instinctively turns to the mother who it knows has never failed to succor, so Annie turned to God, and with a moaning cry for help, sank on her knees just where George had left her. Burying her face in the lounge she prayed that He who heareth even the raven’s cry, would care for her husband, and bring him home again if that could be. So absorbed was she as not to hear the gate’s sharp click, nor the footstep coming up the walk. Impelled by something he could not resist, George had paused just by the garden fence, and yielding to the impulse which said he must see Annie’s face once more, he stole softly to the open door, and stood gazing at her as she knelt, her hands clasped together, and her face hidden from his view, as she prayed for him.