"You'll like to show her this when you go home, won't you?" said
Dick, as he took up the bullet, while Phil examined the marred
picture, and Thorn poised the little thimble on his big finger, with
a sigh.

"How can I, when I don't know where she is, and camp is all the home
I've got?"

The words broke from him like a sudden cry, when some old wound is
rudely touched. Both of the young men started, both laid back the
relics they had taken up, and turned their eyes from Thorn's face,
across which swept a look of shame and sorrow, too significant to be
misunderstood. Their silence assured him of their sympathy, and, as
if that touch of friendlessness unlocked his heavy heart, he eased
it by a full confession. When he spoke again, it was with the
calmness of repressed emotion; and calmness more touching to his
mates than the most passionate outbreak, the most pathetic
lamentation; for the coarse camp-phrases seemed to drop from his
vocabulary; more than once his softened voice grew tremulous, and to
the words "my little girl," there went a tenderness that proved how
dear a place she still retained in that deep heart of his.

"Boys, I've gone so far; I may as well finish; and you'll see I'm
not without some cause for my stern looks and ways; you'll pity me,
and from you I'll take the comfort of it. It's only the old
story,--I married her, worked for her, lived for her, and kept my
little girl like a lady. I should have known that I was too old, too
sober, for a young thing like that; the life she led before the
pinch came just suited her. She liked to be admired, to dress and