Ghosts of Graveyards Past by Laura Briggs Page A

been among the figures she saw bound for the recruitment meeting that day. Instead, he fought a different kind of battle, one he seemed to be losing as the days slipped by.
     
    Our friend, Arthur, does no better since you left. The sickness that came upon him these past weeks refuses still to leave, a remitting fever as many says it must be. I see little of him in the family’s fields, and last week he did not attend church, which ought to tell you how severe he suffers with it. Such attacks leave him no choice, though he says nothing will stop him from being among you all when marching orders are finally given.
     
    Dark, serious Arthur. His face flashed before her with astonishing clarity, causing her to break partway through her narrative. Those features, still so boyish, yet full of understanding, were as familiar as her own shabby reflection in the mirror.
    She knew them from years of glances stolen across a schoolhouse aisle, where Arthur’s head was always more inclined to the lesson than those of his friends. The same was true in church. When others had passed tic-tac-toe on scraps of paper or hid magazine stories between the pages of a Bible, always, he kept his eye upon the pulpit, an action that Nell would try to mimic, as thoughts of him drew her away from the sermon.
    He was handsome, but not with the bold air that made his friend Wray Camden such a favorite among the local girls and envious boys. The two were inseparable and the natural leaders for the group of boys who trailed through the woods after school each day.
    Eight year-old Nell would try to tag along after them, bare feet and braids getting caught in the thick foliage that grew among the woods.
    “Go on,” called the oldest Stroud boy, as he spotted her in the thicket. “Leave us be, why don’t you?” He was perched on a log above the spring, where the youth had been daring each other to walk a balancing act.
    Tears sprang in Nell’s eyes, her hands clenching the fabric of her worn pinafore. She wanted only to watch, but their laughter forced her to turn back most times before the fun even started. One day, she followed them to a part of the wood where violets grew in thick clusters among the roots of the trees. Collecting a handful, she strung the blossoms together for a crown that quickly tangled in the coarse head of hair. She tugged at it desperately in an attempt to make it more pleasing, hearing the guffaws of a classmate as they cried, “Look there—Nell is trying to be a girl.”
    “I didn’t think she knew how,” teased Preston Cray, whose sisters were called the prettiest in the county by those who knew.
    Blushing, Nell had ripped the flowers off and run back through the path. When she stopped to catch her breath, there was a rustling sound on the trail behind her. She gasped as a hand rested against her shoulder, dark eyes meeting hers with a look of apology when she turned around.
    “They don’t mean it, you know. It is only talk to them.” Arthur spoke with reassurance, twining the purple flowers around her wrist, a friendly grin forming at her look of surprise before he ran back to join the friends who called his name impatiently.
    The chain of blossoms had lain on her bedside table until just a sprinkle of dust remained to blow away in the breeze of an open window. She thought of it whenever the flowers came back into bloom, sprouting in rich, velvet hues with the change of the seasons.
    This season had not been kind to any but nature, it seemed. Already a poor farming community, Sylvan Spring had only grown poorer in the absence of its young men. The work was harder than before, slower as well, with children and elderly folk alike shouldering the burden.
    Arthur, meanwhile, could take part in neither world. The illness that kept him from the regiment made it equally difficult to work his father’s fields. A fevered look haunted the dark eyes, and more than one began to speculate that a grave waited for him in the