So, one day, a farm wagon, piled high with straw and pillows, came and took her away. The last thing she said was:

“Dear John! we have lived together sixty years and you never gave me an unkind word. Kiss me! And again! Oh, it’s like ’35, ain’t it? And, John, come for me as soon as things are better with you. And if I can’t do without you that long and send for you—will you come before?”

“Yes,” said John, chokingly. It was all he could say.

Betsy kept her face toward John—then toward the house—then the tallest tree—then the steeple of the church—long after each had successively disappeared from view. Then she bravely turned it toward the poor-house.

And John watched the wagon as it climbed hill after hill and disappeared in valley after valley till it was lost to view.

John tried his pick and shovel again. But they were thick with rust and very heavy. And the wounded doctor had just brought him a crutch—saying that as he was having one made for himself he had also had one made for John—though he could do without it. He smiled a little then and put away forever his old and faithful tools. For a living he did what he could. It was not much, and he and hunger came to be rare intimates.

But that youthful hope which Betsy’s last words had wrought, and its almost savage vigor to do for her, did not depart from John.

After a while something went wrong with his head. He fancied that she was still with him in the little house and always had been. Her dainty old clothing was about everywhere to foster this. One night he dreamed of her—that she was by his side. The dream was so real that he reached out his arms—only to close them on the air. Then he understood for a little that it had all been but a fancy. He lay for a long time shuddering and passing now and then his arms through the empty air—thinking that might have been real and this the fancy. Toward morning a wondrous thought came to him. He remembered that she had said he was to come for her. He was to bring her back. There was to be another beginning—another home-coming—another bride and groom. He did not remember the rest—that he was to wait until his affairs had improved, or until she sent for him.

He pictured it all in the vivid darkness—how he would suddenly appear before her in his Sunday clothes—which meant his best uniform—and say “Come!”

A wondrous voice echoed his own “Come!”

He flung himself out of the bed like a youth. He shaved with great care—he wore no beard and had a clean fresh face—set everything in order in the tiny rooms—pulled down the blinds, locked the door, and, taking up his crutch, started away over the road the wagon had gone to the poor-house.

He paused on the hills and looked backward as Betsy had done. The blinking windows seemed to beckon him back. But he bravely said no to them:

“I ain’t no deserter! I’m coming back—with her—with her. Don’t you understand? With her! Bride and groom again.”

The windows seemed to understand, and stopped beckoning. He waved them a farewell and went on.

It was a long road—forty dusty miles—and hilly. Each hill growing higher and steeper as he approached the city—itself set upon a hill—where the poor-house was. His progress was very slow—sometimes not more than half a mile a day. But he never faltered.

“It’s like climbing Zion’s hill,” said John to himself. “Oh, when she sees me! I shan’t care how many hills there were!”

His bundle was made up in a great red handkerchief, from which his sword protruded, within which was his best uniform. Farm-houses were his sleeping places—but that only. No more than one night for each, though he might have stayed anywhere as long as he wished.

“I’m going to bring her—her, you know, home. Bride and groom. She said it. I heard her voice in the night.”

And this was always sufficient reason for refusing the dear, insidious hospitality pressed everywhere upon him.

If night came and there was no farm-house near, he would nestle in the straw of a wayside stack, under the stars, damp with the dew, to rise with the sun in his face. He liked that, and could go on without breakfast. It was all very beautiful.

His great climax grew upon him mile by mile, until it was the only thing he had in his poor old head.

“She will be sitting this way—with her hands in her lap, like she always sits now,” he would say to himself, “thinking of me. I expect she’s thinking of me all the time. I’ll shave and put on my uniform and my sword, and suddenly appear before her. Attention!—you know. Only I’ll not say that—so’s not to frighten her. Mebby she’ll be reading her Bible. Then she’ll not see me till I’m right on top of her. Then I’ll say, soft, so’s not to frighten her—about this a—way—‘B—E—T—S—Y!’” He whispered it lovingly. “And she’ll just say ‘John!’” This was a sharp cry of joy.

He never got further than this. It did not seem necessary. What could be better? What could be beyond that?

His journey came to an end suddenly—as it seemed to John. It made him gulp on something in his throat. One morning the spires of the city lay close before him as if they had been conjured out of a dream. There it was against the pink clouds, within the morning mists, glowing, like the City of God as he had fancied it. He stood and gazed upon it, awed and bewildered. He had not thought of it as beautiful. To him it was only the city of the poor-house. Perhaps Betsy would not wish to leave a place so beautiful.

He bravely cast out the unworthy thought. She would leave any place for him. Heaven itself. With his faith renewed he went up into the city of the spires.

And there he found the first unkindness of his long journey. No one offered him a place to sleep or a bite to eat. And there he could not see the sun when it rose in the morning. And what had become of the glories of the city he had seen against the clouds? This one was not glorious.

On the third day he found the poor-house. It was a splendid building on the top of a hill. Before he quite reached it he did as he had planned. There was a beautiful wood back of the place. Here, under the trees, he shaved and put on his uniform. There was a spot of rust on the sword. He smiled as he thought how Betsy would have chided him for that. He found some soft earth and rubbed it off. The old clothing, and everything else, he put back into the red handkerchief and hid the bundle under the roots of the tree. Then he marched up to the great and beautiful door—without his crutch—every inch a soldier once more.

A uniformed official led him in, and at last he was in the presence of his wife. She was dead. Her hands were folded within each other as he himself had often folded them. There were—on head and breast—the dainty cap and kerchief which she herself had long provided against her burial. On her dear face was the peace that passeth understanding. Indeed, she smiled up at him as he looked.

Then John’s heart stopped. At Betsy’s side he died. And so quietly that they who stood near never heard the sound of his gentle old voice.

They sleep together—Betsy and John. Not at Saint Michael’s with their five boys. Of them nothing was known at the poor-house. Their graves are in the burying-ground of the poor. There is a cheap stone upon which somebody has carved only their names and this text:

because Betsy’s Bible, when they took it up, fell open at that scripture—and her trembling finger had deeply marked the words as it followed them day after day to aid her dimming sight.