All that long delicious morning we were with
him. In his tender charge we were permitted to go
down among the tumult and the music of the
streets, his round good-humored face and big blue
eyes lit with a luster like our own. And happy
little Mary Alice Smith--how proud she was of
him! And how closely and how tenderly, through
all that golden morning, did the strong brown hand
clasp hers! A hundred times at least, as we promenaded
thus, she swung her head back jauntily to
whisper to us in that old mysterious way of hers
that "David--Mason--Jeffries--and--Mary--Alice
--Smith--knew--something--that--we--couldn't
--guess!" But when he had returned us home, and
after dinner had started down the street alone, with
little Mary Alice clapping her hands after him
above the gate and laughing in a strange new voice,
and with the backs of her little fluttering hands
vainly striving to blot out the big tear-drops that
gathered in her eyes, we vaguely guessed the secret
she and David kept. That night at supper-time we
knew it fully. He had enlisted.

. . . . . . .


Among the list of "killed" at Rich Mountain,
Virginia, occurred the name of "Jeffries, David M."
We kept it from her as long as we could. At last