“Tom,” he said. But there was no answer, no movement. “I have come to bid you good-by, Tom,” he said; “I am going back to deliver myself up.” But still Tom slept, and groaned. “Not one word of good-by, Tom,” said poor Ned. “And yet this is the last time――the very last time――God help me!――that we shall see each other, that I shall see you. O my darling, my darling, my darling! please hear me. The only one I have ever loved at all, the only one who has ever loved me. The last words that you heard from me were those of anger and impatience, and now, poor fellow! you cannot speak even to say good-by. Hear me say it. When you get well again, have some memory of my bending over you and saying it, and telling you that I was saying good-by, good-by, good-by! O Tom, my darling! don’t forget it. If you knew how I love you, how I have loved you in all my jealous, morbid moods, in all my exacting selfishness,――O Tom! my darling, my darling! can’t you say one word, one little word before we part,――just one little word, if it were only my name? Oh, please, please speak to me! Don’t you remember when we were examined for college together? You sat across the hall. I saw you there; and I wanted to go over and help you. And your picture, Tom, that we quarrelled about,――I have it now, Tom; it will be with me when they bury me. Tom, don’t you remember that picture? It was the night when I determined to go to war that you gave me that picture; it was just before we enlisted. O Tom! why did I let you come at all? You will see your mother, Tom; and you will go home now, and marry, and be happy, and forget me. Oh, no, no, no, Tom! you won’t do that; you can’t do that. You won’t forget Ned, darling; he was something to you; and you were all the world to him. O Tom! Tom! please say one word to him.” He stopped and was silent. Tom only moaned restlessly in his sleep; and there seemed to be a painful death-like silence inside the tent, while outside was the bright life of the morning and the busy murmur of the camp. “Ah, well!” he said, “it is better so. He would not let me go if he were conscious; he would say that I must stay with him; and that cannot be. He need not know that I am dead, as I shall be, until he himself is well once again. Good-by, Tom! good-by! and God bless you forever, my darling!” And calmly, yet with a dreadful pang at his heart, he stooped, and once more kissed the flushed face of his friend; then quickly, as if impelled by some force not his own, without daring to look backward, he rushed from the tent. IX. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. “The morn broke in upon his solemn dream; And still with steady pulse and deepening eye, ‘Where bugles call,’ he said, ‘and rifles gleam, I follow though I die.’”