The second disastrous battle at Bull Run was over, and the shadow of a
summer night wrapped the field of carnage in darkness. Thickly upon the
battlefield lay the dead and dying, the sharp, bitter cries of the
latter rising on the night wind, and adding tenfold to the horror of the
scene. In the woods, not very far away, more than one brave soldier was
weltering in his lifeblood, just where, in his rapid flight, he had
fallen, the grass his pillow, and the leafy branches of the forest trees
his only covering.
Side by side, and near to a running brook, two wounded men were lying,
or rather one was supporting the other and trying to stanch the purple
gore, pouring darkly from a fearful bullet wound in the region of the
heart. The stronger of the two, he who wore a major's uniform, had come
accidentally upon the other, writhing in agony, and muttering at
intervals snatches of the prayer with which he once had been familiar,
and which seemed to bring Lily back to him again, just as she was when
in the attic chamber she made him kneel by her, and say "Our Father." He
tried to say it now, and the whispered words caught the ear of Irving
Stanley, arresting his steps at once.
"Poor fellow! it's gone hard with you," he said, kneeling by the
sufferer, whom he recognized as the deserter, Dr. Richards, who had
returned to his allegiance, had craved forgiveness for his sins, and
been restored to the ranks, discharging his duties faithfully, and
fighting that day with a zeal and energy which did much in reinstating
him in the good opinion of those who witnessed his daring bravery.
But the doctor's work was done, and never from his lips would Lily know
how well his promise had been kept. Giddy with pain and weak from the
loss of blood, he had groped his way through the woods, fighting back
the horrid certainty that to-morrow's sun would not rise for him, and
sinking at length exhausted upon the grass, whose freshness was now
defaced by the blood which poured so freely from his wound.
It was thus that Irving Stanley found him, starting at first as from a
hissing shell, and involuntarily clasping his hand over the place where
lay a little note, received a few days before, a reply to the earnest
declaration of love he had at last written to his sister's governess,
Maria Gordon. There was but one alternative, and Adah met it resolutely,
though every fiber of her heart throbbed with keen agony as she told to
Irving Stanley the story of her life. She was a wife, a mother, the
sister of Hugh Worthington, they said, the Adah for whom Dr. Richards
had sought so long in vain, and for whom Murdock, the wicked father, was
seeking still for aught she knew to the contrary. Even the story of the
doctor's secretion in the barn at Sunnymead was confessed. Nothing was
withheld except the fact that even as he professed to love her, so she
in turn loved him, or had done so before she knew it was a sin. Surprise
had, for a few moments, stifled every other emotion, and Irving Stanley
had sat like one suddenly bereft of motion, when he read who Maria
Gordon was. Then came the bitter thought that he had lost her, mingled
with a deep feeling of resentment toward the man who had so cruelly
wronged the gentle girl, and who alone stood between him and happiness.
For Irving Stanley could overlook all the rest. His great warm heart,
so full of kindly sympathy and generous charity for all mankind could
take to its embrace the fair, sweet woman he had learned to love so
much, and be a father to her little boy, as if it had been his own. But
this might not be. There was a mighty obstacle in the way, and feeling
that it mattered little now whether he ever came from the field alive,
Irving Stanley, with a whispered prayer for strength to bear and do
right, had hidden the letter in his bosom, and then, when the hour of
conflict came, plunged into the thickest of the fight with a
fearlessness born of keen and recent disappointment, which made life
less valuable than it had been before.