A DECLARATION OF LOVE 248 CHAPTER XX. A BOLD STROKE FOR A HUSBAND 265 CHAPTER XXI. A HUNGRY HEART 279 CHAPTER XXII. A MYSTERIOUS APPOINTMENT 289 CHAPTER XXIII. AN ENGAGEMENT 297 CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION 315 THE SOLDIER’S ORPHANS. CHAPTER I. A FRIEND IN NEED. God help the poor who have ever known the refinements of comfort! God help that little family, for it had been driven first from comfortable apartments, where many a tasteful object had rendered home cheerful, to the garret rooms of a poor house in one of the most neglected streets of Philadelphia. Upward, from story to story, those helpless ones had been forced by that hard task master poverty, till they found shelter at last under the very roof. Their attic had only one window, a small dormer one, which looked out upon stacks of chimneys, grouped like black sentinels huddled over uneven roofs, and down upon yards full of broken barrels, old fragments of sheet-iron, scraps of oil-cloth, piles of brick and broken stoves, rusted lengths of refuse pipe, and all the odds and ends which scores of poverty-stricken families had cast forth from their dwellings. Above these, from window to window, swinging high in the wind, lines, heavy with wet clothes, were fluttering dismally, giving forth a sudden rush of sound now and then like broken-winged birds making wild efforts to fly. This was the scene upon which that quiet old woman looked, as she sat in a low chair close by the window. Not a scrap of green—not a tree-bough broke the coarse monotony when her eyes turned earthward. But it was near sunset, and over the house-tops came a flood of burning light, bronzing the chimneys and scattering rich scintillations of gold on the roofs; and this poor old woman smiled thoughtfully as she saw it, praising God in her heart that he gave the glory of sunset and of the dawn alike to the poor and the rich. She was a plain, simple, pleasant-faced old woman, with a cap of soft, white muslin, harmonizing sweetly with the hair folded back from her forehead, white as snow, and soft as floss silk. Her dress, an old brown merino, had been darned and patched, and turned in all its breadths more than once; but it was so neat and fitted her dainty old figure so perfectly, that you could not help admiring it. Over this she wore an old-fashioned kerchief, cut from some linen garment, which lay in folds across her bosom, like the marble drapery sculptured around a statue.