"What are you asking, Willie ?" He sat down; taking her upon his knee, and with the old fond gesture, holding her head to his heart,--"I should have told you before, dearie, but I did not wish to throw any shadow on the happy days we have been spending together; they were few and brief enough without marring them; and I was certain of the effect it would have upon you, by your incessant anxiety for Robert." She drew a long, gasping sigh, and started away from his hold: "O Willie, you are not going to--" His arm drew her back to her resting-place.

"I do not return to my command, darling.

I am to raise a black brigade." "Freedmen ?" "Yes, dearie." "O Willie,--and that act just passed!" "It is true; yet, after all, it is but one risk more." "One?
O Willie, it is a thousand.

You had that many chances of escape where you were; you might be wounded and captured a score of times, and come home safe at last; but this!" "I know." "To go into every battle with the sentence of death hanging over you; to know that if you are anywhere captured, anyhow made prisoner, you are condemned to die,--O Willie, I can't bear it; I can't bear it! I shall die, or go mad, to carry such a thought all the time." For answer he only held her close, with his face resting upon her hair, and in the stillness they could hear each other's heart beat.
"It is God's service," he said, at last.
"I know." "It will end slavery and the war more effectually than aught else." "I know." "It will make these freedmen, wherever they fight, free men.

It will give them and their people a sense of dignity and power that might otherwise take generations to secure." "I know." "And I.Both feeling and knowing this, who so fit to yield and to do for such a cause?
If those who see do not advance, the blind will never walk." Silence for a space again fell between them.