The stolen money was never restored. Stephen struggled on a few weeks longer, alternating, hoping, and despairing, suffering from the physical abuse he had received, crushed in spirit, battling with disease and weakness as only a brave man can, worrying over his unprotected property and his debts in the old home he never reached, watching the war, and praying for the success of the Union armies, and died without knowing--and God be praised for this--that the reckless torches of that same Union army would lay in ashes and ruins the result of the hard labor of his own worn-out life and wreck the fortunes of his only child. Although doubting and fearing, we had never despaired of his recovery, until the morning when he commenced to sink and we saw him rapidly passing away. He was at once aware of his condition and spoke of his business, desiring that, first of all, when his property could be reached, his debts should be faithfully paid. A few little minutes more and there lay before us, still and pitiful, all that remained to tell of that hard life’s struggle and battle, which had failed most of all through a great-hearted love for humanity, his faithfulness to what he conceived to be his duty, and his readiness to do more for mankind than it was willing to do for itself. Clara Barton did not long continue in hospital service after the immediate need was passed. With the firing of the last gun she returned to Washington. One chapter in her career was closed. Another and important work was about to open, and she already had it in mind. But the work she had done was memorable, and its essential character must not be forgotten. Clara Barton was more and other than a hospital nurse. She was not simply one of a large number of women who nursed sick soldiers. She did that, hastening to assist them at the news of the very first bloodshed, and continuing until Richmond had fallen. Hers was the distinction of doing her work upon the actual field of battle; of following the cannon so as to be on the ground when the need began; of not waiting for the wounded soldier to be brought to the hospital, but of conveying the hospital to the wounded soldier. Others followed her in this good work; others accompanied her and were her faithful associates, but she was, in a very real sense, the soul and inspiration of the movement which carried comfort to wounded men while the battle was still in progress. She was not, in any narrow sense, a hospital nurse; she was, as she has justly been called, “the angel of the battle-field.”