Free Ghosts of Graveyards Past by Laura Briggs Page B

expect to move camp at any moment,” she read, fumbling the words as she thought of delayed communication and her brother and the other soldiers trudging through the autumn weather. “Some of the fellows’ boots have been pulled apart in the mud along these banks we now occupy. Mine have held true, as have Arthur’s, though his feet swell so, he can hardly get them on…” She trailed off, her gaze drawn to where the doctor slipped from the parlor, her skirts rustling quietly down the hall. Guessing the reason for her withdrawal was not hard, though Nell couldn’t help feeling a pang of discomfort. Miss Moore’s letters from the battlefield were not ones to be read aloud, or so she suspected.
    Envy flickered through her, a faint spark that threatened quickly to grow to a flame. Part of her longed to know what lay inside those envelopes which disappeared to the doctor’s desk and bedside table. The other part prayed to overcome this weakness that haunted her since childhood, an infatuation for a man who would never return her affection.
    “There now,” Mrs. Hinkle said, pressing her hand with a look of sympathy. “How you must miss your brother, dear.”
    “Yes, ma’am” she replied, a flush creeping over her face at the woman’s misunderstanding. For as much as she missed Henry, this other burden weighed on her heart with a force equally stunning and far more hopeless.
    Tucking the letter away, she offered a grateful smile to the older woman. “Henry is in our prayers and thoughts at all times. He and—and all our friends who face this difficulty.”
    Her grandmother murmured her assent, the atmosphere in the parlor growing somber and silent until the only sounds were the ticking of a clock and the Hinkle daughter sipping loudly from a teacup.
     
    
     
    Young Charley’s story should cost you a blush, Henry, along with certain of our friends who know of what I write. For, do you not recall a different Mischief Night some ten years ago, when you helped to play a prank on that same unsuspecting neighbor?
    You will no doubt say this event has escaped your memory, the same as that time you snipped off my braids during a spelling lesson. I shall gladly recount the whole event, as I am sure it would earn more than one laugh when shared by the campfire some quiet evening.
    How innocent it began as we blackened our faces with the soot from the hearth. Granny Clare let us take the old broken stool and barrel for the bonfire, and you generously let me throw both into the blaze. I do believe your plan was to sneak away unnoticed and leave me there as you and the other boys carried out that dreadful scheme with the snuff pinched from Wray’s father.
    Yes, if Wray Camden is sitting beside you, he will recall it was his idea to “smoke out” Mr. Roan from his hiding place. There were four of you eager to share in the guilt, clambering over that rusty old gate in the moonlight. I witnessed it all from the blackberry hedge where you made me hide out of the way. You did not want a girl to tattle on you, but it was not my voice that protested when Wray’s bold fingers struck the match.
     
    Crouched in the bushes beside Roan’s shack, Nell had watched, breathless as her brother’s friends prepared to carry out their prank. No one had expected Arthur to show up since he already condemned the scheme when they hatched it over school recess. But it was his figure that came beside her in the hedge, placing a finger to her mouth before he slipped out to confront the mischief makers.
    “We will be caught,” he reasoned, “and the punishment severe.” He spoke chiefly to Wray, whose match was snuffed before it could touch the line of powder.
    The warning brought a scowl to the other youth’s handsome features, though his father’s anger was known to have blackened eyes and broken farm equipment in drunken rages. In hushed tones, they argued the danger with Wray ignoring his friend’s advice to light the trail before