The young man helped to reassure her, and in telling him her troubles she forgot her chagrin, feeling very sorry that he was going on to Albany, and so down the river to West Point. West Point was associated in Aunt Betsy’s mind with that handful of noble men who within the walls of Sumter were then the centre of so much interest, and at parting with her companion she said to him. “Young man, you are a soldier, I take it, from your havin’ been to school at West Point. Maybe you’ll never have to use your learning, but if you do, stick to the old flag. Don’t you go against that, and if an old woman’s prayers for your safety can do any good, be sure you’ll have mine.” She raised her hand reverently, and Lieutenant Bob felt a kind of awe steal over him as if he might one day need that benediction, the first perhaps given in the cause then so terribly agitating all hearts both North and South. “I’ll remember what you say,” he answered, and then as a new idea was presented he took out a card, and writing a few lines upon it, bade her hand it to the conductor just as she was getting into the city. Without her glasses Aunt Betsy could not read, and thinking it did not matter now, she thrust the card into her pocket, and bidding her companion good-by, took her seat in the other train. Lonely and a very little homesick she began to feel; for her new neighbors were not as willing to talk as Bob had been, and she finally relapsed into silence, which resulted in a quiet sleep, from which she awoke just as they were entering the long, dark tunnel, which she would have likened to Purgatory, had she believed in such a place. “I didn’t know we ran into cellars,” she said faintly; but nobody heeded her, or cared for the anxious timid-looking woman, who grew more and more anxious, until suddenly remembering the card, she drew it from her pocket, and the next time the conductor appeared handed it to him, watching him while he read that “Lieut. Robert Reynolds would consider it as a personal favor if he would see the bearer safely into the Fourth Avenue cars.”