name as a soldier. But there were other influences at work to make me doubtful of the propriety of my longer continuing the hazardous experiment of passing myself off as a man. In an adjoining ward of the hospital was my lover, to a speedy meeting with whom I was looking forward with many fond anticipations. How would he regard my conduct? And should he, as I hoped he would, be proud of my efforts to advance the Confederate cause by doing a soldier's duty, would he be willing that I should longer continue to wear my uniform, especially if we should conclude to have our marriage solemnized at an early day? These were questions that pressed themselves upon me, and that, even more than the dispiriting influences of a sick-room, made me half repent that I had ever assumed male attire, and made me more than half resolve to permanently abandon it so soon as I was out of the hospital.
I was curious, however, rather than apprehensive, with regard to the effect of the disclosures I would have to make when I met Captain De Caulp. There was nothing that I had done that I need blush for, while he had himself been the witness, on one momentous occasion, of my prowess as a warrior, and I longed to hear him repeat to me, as a woman, the praise he had so freely bestowed upon me as a man when we fought side by side at Shiloh.
What a strange courtship ours had been! The only time we had met since our engagement was on the field of battle, and in the midst of scenes of carnage, and here we both were now, sick in adjoining wards of the same hospital; I, longing to be with him, but unable to go to his side; and he, all unconscious that the woman he. loved was so near; sighing, doubtless, for the time to come when our futures would be united, but never dreaming that the future he sighed for was so near at hand. It was like a romance, and it was in the scenes of a romance, the memories of which floated through my mind as I thought over the situation, that I alone could find any similitude to it.
I recollected, as I reviewed the circumstances of my own case, an old Spanish novela, which I had read when a girl, and which had long since passed out of mind with other childish memories, but the incidents of which now came back to me with singular vividness, on account of a certain resemblance they had to points in my own career. The author's name I forgot, but I distinctly remembered the story, which
