“Me one,—me, please,” and Rose Mather’s hand was thrust from the window in time to catch a paper destined for some one farther in the rear, but ere she had found the column sought, she heard from those around her that the worst was realized. There had been a battle. Our troops were utterly defeated, and worse than all, disgraced. “But the 13th?” Annie whispered faintly. “Does it speak of the 13th?” Rose did not know. Her interest just then was centered in the “Massachusetts——,” and in her eagerness to hear from Tom, she forgot for a moment that such a regiment as the N. Y. 13th existed. But there were others who did not forget, and just as the question left Annie’s lips, the answer came in the despairing cry which rent the air as some reckless person shouted aloud, “The 13th a total wreck! Not a man left of Company R.” “Oh, George,” poor Annie cried, and the next moment Rose held the fainting form upon her lap. “Drive home,—to Mrs. Graham’s I mean,” she said to Jake, who, with some difficulty made his way through the crowd, but not until the story so cruelly set afloat was contradicted by those who had more coolly read the sad intelligence. The news was bad enough, but the Rockland company was not mentioned, and its friends had no alternative but to wait until the telegraph wires should bring some tidings of the saved. Rose was the first to be remembered. Will did his duty faithfully. “A terrible battle,” his message ran. “Soldiers are arriving every hour, but Tom has not come yet.” A telegram for the Widow Simms came next, the mother’s quick eye taking in at a glance that only Eli’s name and John’s were appended to it. Isaac’s was not there. Where was he then, oh where? She asked this question frantically, refusing to read the note lest it should confirm her fears. “I’ll read it, mother. Let me see,” Susan said, wresting the paper from her hands, and reading with trembling tones, “Eli and I are safe. Isaac was last seen leading Lieut. Graham from the field.” Oh what a piteous wail went up to Heaven then, for Widow Simms, when she received the news, was sitting in Annie’s door, and Annie was kneeling at her side. George was wounded, of course, and if wounded, dead, else why had he not thought of her ere this? Locked in each other’s arms the two stricken women wept bitterly, the mother sobbing amid her tears, “My boy, my boy,” while Annie moaned sadly, “My George, my husband.” Well was it for both that ere that dark hour came they had learned to follow on, even when their Father’s footsteps were in the sea, knowing the hand which guided would never lead them wrong. Annie was the first to rally. “It might not after all be so bad,” she said. “George and Isaac were prisoners, perhaps, but even that was preferable to death. It would surely save them from danger in future battles. The Southerners would not maltreat helpless captives. There were kind people South as well as North.”