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94 CHAPTER IX.

OUR NEW HOME AT FORT LINCOLN.

a few days we were ready to return to Dakota, and very glad to go, except for leaving the old parents.

The hardest trial of my husband's life was parting with his mother. Such partings were the only occasions when I ever saw him lose entire control of himself, and I always looked forward to the hour of their separation with dread.

For hours before we started, I have seen him follow his mother about, whispering some comforting word to her; or, opening the closed door of her own room, where, womanlike, she fought out her grief alone, sit beside her as long as he could endure it. She had been an invalid for so many years that each parting seemed to her the final one. Her groans and sobs were heart-rending. She clung to him every step when he started to go, and exhausted at last, was led back, half fainting, to her lounge.

The general would rush out of the house, sobbing like a child, and then throw himself into the carriage beside me completely unnerved. I could only give silent comfort. My heart bled for him, and in the long silence that followed as we journeyed on, I knew that his thoughts were with his mother. At our first stop