It was only later that the picture of his mother ill and failing came to him, and it smote him in the midst of his happiness and clung to him afterward like a nightmare. It haunted him. She was dying. He applied for a furlough; but furloughs were hard to get then and he could not hear from it; and when a letter came in his mother’s name in a lady’s hand which he did not know, telling him of his mother’s poverty and sickness and asking him if he could get off to come and see her, it seemed to him that she was dying, and he did not wait for the furlough. He was only a few days’ march from home and he felt that he could see her and get back before he was wanted. So one day he set out in the rain. It was a scene of desolation that he passed through, for the country was the seat of war; fences were gone, woods burnt, and fields cut up and bare; and it rained all the time. A little before morning, on the night of the third day, he reached the edge of the district and plunged into its well-known pines, and just as day broke he entered the old path which led up the little hill to his mother’s cabin. All during his journey he had been picturing the meeting with some one else besides his mother, and if Vashti had stood before him as he crossed the old log he would hardly have been surprised. Now, however, he had other thoughts; as he reached the old clearing he was surprised to find it grown up in small pines already almost as high as his head, and tall weeds filled the rows among the old peach-trees and grew up to the very door. He had been struck by the desolation all the way as he came along; but it had not occurred to him that there must be a change at his own home; he had always pictured it as he left it, as he had always thought of Vashti in her pink calico, with her hat in her hand and her heavy hair almost falling down over her neck. Now a great horror seized him. The door was wet and black. His mother must be dead. He stopped and peered through the darkness at the dim little structure. There was a little smoke coming out of the chimney, and the next instant he strode up to the door. It was shut, but the string was hanging out and he pulled it and pushed the door open. A thin figure seated in the small split-bottomed chair on the hearth, hovering as close as possible over the fire, straightened up and turned slowly as he stepped into the room, and he recognized his mother--but how changed! She was quite white and little more than a skeleton. At sight of the figure behind her she pulled herself to her feet, and peered at him through the gloom. “Mother!” he said. “Darby!” She reached her arms toward him, but tottered so that she would have fallen, had he not caught her and eased her down into her chair.