What cared he longer for this world?
Almost nothing! But one thing urged him to rally his energies and meet the blow with fortitude whenever it should come.

It was the knowledge that his little boy would need a father's care.

This made him not quite oblivious to this world, for though his life would be in the front, so soon as he returned to the battle-field, there were chances for his escaping death, and his desire was to live, so that the child might grow up and remind him of his wife.

No, not remind! As fresh as the hour when love first entered his heart for her--as plain as the day he led her to the altar and registered his vows to Heaven--and as pure as herself, would his memory ever be for her.

Time can soothe woes, obliterate the scars left by grief, but the memory of a dead wife can never be extinguished in the mind of a husband, even though her place in his heart may be filled by another.