About this time the minister's
son, who had been away to college, came to the village. He met Mary here
and there, and they became great friends. He was a likely fellow, near
her own age, and it was natural they should like one another. Sometimes
I winced at seeing him made free of the home from which I was shut out;
then I would open the grammar at the leaf where 'Dear John' was written
up in the corner, and my trouble was gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale
these days, and I think her people were worrying her.
"It was one evening two or three days before we got the news of Bull
Run. I had gone down to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set
round the old man's lot, and was just stepping into the enclosure, when
I heard voices from the opposite side. One was Mary's, and the other I
knew to be young Marston's, the minister's son. I didn't mean to listen,
but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. _We must never meet again_, she
was saying in a wild way. _We must say good-by here, forever,--good-by,
good-by!_ And I could hear her sobbing. Then, presently, she said,
hurriedly, _No, no; my hand, not my lips_! Then it seemed he kissed her
hands, and the two parted, one going towards the parsonage, and the
other out by the gate near where I stood.
"I don't know how long I stood there, but the night-dews had wet me to
the bone when I stole out of the graveyard and across the road to the
schoolhouse. I unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from the
desk and hid it in my bosom.
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