Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/332



ESS than two weeks later that note of Reba's, redirected by the San Francisco mail-clerk, lay inside the warm pocket of a soldier in uniform. Now and then it left the pocket, and rustled in the breeze that swept a lake beside which the soldier was walking. He was a tall, well-built fellow. There was no stoop to his shoulders now. There was no looseness to his clothes. There was a clean-cutness, a fine chiseling about every curve and angle of him now that, as compared to his shapelessness four years ago, was like the finished statue as compared to the rough-hewn block of marble merely suggesting form. Massive he still was, but lean now and firm of muscle. Erect and square-shouldered, feet firmly planted upon ground, there was something self-reliant, dauntless in the very way he stood. One didn't expect a tear from the eyes of such a military figure to splash down upon the letter which he held.

He had received that letter an hour and a half ago, but it had been opened only a short twenty minutes. Not until he had left far behind him the encampment and escaped all danger of interruption from his comrades had Nathaniel Cawthorne opened Rebecca's letter. He surmised from the date upon the envelope that the letter was an answer to the message he had left behind in San Francisco, to be sent her in July. He wanted to be unobserved when he read that answer, and placing the unopened envelope in his pocket