_“Sweet Wifie:--I have a presentiment to-night that I shall not live to see you again. I feel the shadows of defeat and ruin closing upon us. I am surer day by day that our cause is lost and surrender is a word I have never learned to speak. If I could only see you for one hour, that I might tell you all I have thought in the lone watches of the night in camp, or marching over desolate fields. Many tender things I have never said to you I have learned in these days. I write this last message to tell you how, more and more beyond the power of words to express, your love has grown upon me, until your spirit seems the breath I breathe. My heart is so full of love for you and my boy, that I can’t go into battle now without thinking how many hearts will ache and break in far away, homes because of the work I am about to do. I am sick of it all. I long to be at home again and walk with my sweet young bride among the flowers she loves so well, and hear the old mocking bird that builds each spring in those rose bushes at our window._ _“If I am killed, you must live for our boy and rear him to a glorious manhood in the new nation that will be born in this agony. I love you,--I love you unto the uttermost, and beyond death I will live, if only to love you forever._ _“Always in life or death your own,_ _“Charles._” For two hours she held this letter open in her hands and seemed unable to move it. And then mechanically she opened the one addressed to “Charles Gaston, jr.” “_My Darling Boy:--I send you by Nelse my watch and sword. It will be all I can bequeath to you from the wreck that will follow the war. This sword was your great grandfather’s. He held it as he charged up the heights of King’s Mountain against Ferguson and helped to carve this nation out of a wilderness. It was a sorrowful day for me when I felt it my duty to draw that sword against the old flag in defence of my home and my people. You will live to see a reunited country. Hang this sword back beside the old flag of our fathers when the end has come, and always remember that it was never drawn from its scabbard by your father, or your grandfather who fought with Jackson at New Orleans, or your great grandfather in the Revolution, save in the cause of justice and right. I am not fighting to hold slaves in bondage. I am fighting for the inalienable rights of my people under the Constitution our fathers created. It may be we have outgrown this Constitution. But I calmly leave to God and history the question as to who is right in its interpretation. Whatever you do in life, first, last and always do what you believe to be right. Everything else is of little importance. With a heart full of love, Your father,_ _“Charles Gaston.”_ ***** This letter she must have held open for hours, for it was two o’clock in the morning when a wild peal of laughter rang from her feverish lips and brought Aunt Eve and Nelse hurrying into the room.