Saunders was not yet a dying man, but the natural process of recovery seemed at a standstill. There came a sharp turn for the worse after "Shorty" Blake limped in with a letter, which he tossed to the languid private with a cheery shout of--
"Wake up, Jim; here's the latest news from home. Hurry and tell us the price of butter an' eggs at the corner store."
But Saunders read the letter in silence, and while he read, his thin young face twitched, tears came, and the helpless length of him moved in little jerks that rippled the blankets.
The chaffing queries of his comrades were unanswered, and the patient seemed to be asleep through the afternoon and evening. When the light of the next morning filtered through the latticed windows of oiled paper, "Shorty" Blake saw Saunders grope for the letter under the blanket roll that served him for a pillow, and read it again. His voice was weaker than before, as he beckoned Blake and Jenkins to the cot, and said:
"Here's what comes of my leavin' home to be buried in this muck-heap of a town--an' my folks turned out to starve. You might as well read it, though you can't do any good."
Shorty saw a woman's handwriting, and he took the closely written sheets with singular gentleness. The spelling was imperfect in spots, and there were many erasures, but he stumbled through the uncertain lines, which said:
"No letter has come from you since you left the Philippines, but I'm sure you are all right, because no notice has come to me from the War Department as your next of kin. All I know is that your regiment is in Peking, and I hope and pray you are with it, all safe and sound. Sister Mary and me are pretty busy, as there has been no one to help us with the place since your brother died last spring. I know your enlistment ain't up for another year, and it's wicked to desert, and they would shoot you for it anyhow, and whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; but it does seem kind of hard when we want you so much at home that you have to be fighting them poor Chinamen when I've been sending money for their souls these thirty-seven years. But as long as we all have our health there ain't any real troubles I suppose.
"I don't mean to find fault and you mustn't worry about us. I'm as active as a cricket and Mary hasn't been ailin' any to speak of. It's been a good long spell of dry weather, and that's good for my rheumatism, but it wasn't very encouraging for the crops. The mortgage on the house and farm is due in six weeks, and I can't get a renewal, though it's only six hundred dollars, as you know. The bank people is that haughty about the thing that I don't exactly see how we can get around them.