In violation of military discipline, he turned his head to take one last,
fond look at the home he was leaving behind. It might be the last time he
should ever gaze on that loved spot, now a thousand times more dear than
ever before. Never had he realized the meaning of home; never before had
he felt how closely his heart's tendrils were entwined about that hallowed
place. Again, in spite of his firmness and fortitude, and in spite of the
sneers of Ben Lethbridge, he felt the hot tears sliding down his cheek.

When he reached the brow of the hill which would soon hide the little
cottage from his view, perhaps forever, he gazed behind him again, to take
his last look at the familiar spot. His mother and sister still stood at
the front gate watching the receding column in which the son and the
brother was marching away to peril and perhaps death.

"God bless my mother! God bless them all!" were the involuntary
ejaculations of the soldier boy, as he turned away from the hallowed
scene.

But the memory of that blessed place, sanctified by the presence of those
loving and devoted ones, was shrined in the temple of his heart, ever to
go with him in camp and march, in the perils of battle and siege, to keep
him true to his God, true to himself, and true to those whom he had left
behind him. That last look at home and those that make it home, like the
last fond gaze we bestow on the loved and the lost, was treasured up in
the garner of the heart's choicest memories, to be recalled in the solemn
stillness of the midnight vigil, amid the horrors of the battle-field when
the angry strife of arms had ceased, and in the gloom of the soldier's
sick bed when no mother's hand was near to lave the fevered brow.