So, hither and thither walking, I gather them broadly cast;

Where yonder young face doth sicken, it may be the best and last.

In no void or vague of duty I come to his aid to-day;

I bring God's love to his bed-side, and carry God's gift away.

MR. AXTELL.

PART V.

"Miss Anna! Miss Anna! Doctor Percival is waiting for you," were the

opening words of the next day's life. Its bells had had no influence in

restoring me to consciousness of existence. I never have liked metallic

commanders. Now Jeffy's Ethiopian tones were inspiriting, and to their

music I began the mystic march of another day.

Doctor Percival was not out of patience, it seemed, with waiting; for,

as I went in, he was so engrossed with a morning paper that he did not

even look up, or notice me, until I made myself vocal, and then only to

say,--

"Ring for breakfast, Anna; I shall have done by the time it comes."

"It is here, father"; and he dropped the newspaper, turned his chair to

the table, leaned his arms upon it, covered his precious face with two

thin, quivering hands, and remained thus, whilst I prepared coffee, and

lingered as long as possible in the seeming occupation.

Jeffy--and I suspect that the mischievous African designed the

act--overturned the coffee in handing it to my father, who is not

endowed with the most equable temper ever consigned to mortals; but this

morning he did not give Jeffy even a severe look, for his eyes were full

of tender pity, such as I had never seen in them in all the past.

"How is your patient?" I asked.

"Better, thank God!" he replied.

"Were you with him all night?"

"Yes, all night. I must go out this morning to see some patients. I'll

send up a nurse from the hospital on my way. I don't think the delirium

will return before mid-day; can you watch him till then, Anna?"--and

he asked with a seeming doubt either of my willingness or my ability,

perhaps a mingling of both.

I did not like to recount my serious failures with Miss Axtell, but I

answered,--

"I will try."

Before he went, he took me in to the place of my watching. The gentleman

was asleep. The housekeeper was quite willing to relinquish her office.

The good physician gave me orders concerning the febrifuge to be

administered in case of increase of febrile symptoms, and saying that

"it wouldn't be long ere some one came to relieve me," he bent over the

sleeping patient for an instant, and the next was gone.

I think a half-hour must have fled in silence, when Jeffy stole in, his

eyes opening as Chloe's had done not many days agone, when the vision

of myself was painted thereon. I upheld a cautionary index, and he was

still as a mouse, but like a mouse he proceeded to investigate; he

opened a bureau-drawer the least way, and pushing his arm in where my

laces were wont to dwell, he drew out, with exultant delight, the wig

before mentioned.

"What _do_ you s'pose _he_ wants with this thing'?" whispered Jeffy; and

he pointed to the soft, fair masses of curling hair that rested against

the pillow.

Jeffy was a spoiled boy,--"my doing," everybody said, and it may

have been truly. He was Chloe's son, and had inherited her ways and

affectionate heart, and for these I forgave him much.

I said, "Hush!"--whereupon he lifted up the wig and deposited it upon

the top of his tangled circlets of hair before I could stay him.

I reached out my hand for it, not venturing on words, for fear of

disturbing the patient; but Jeffy, with unpardonable wilfulness, danced

out of my circuit, and at the same instant the sick man turned his head,

and beheld Jeffy in the possession of his property. Jeffy looked very

repentant, said in low, deprecatory tones, "I'm sorry," and, depositing

the wig in the drawer, hastened to escape, which I know he would not

have done but for the disabled condition of the invalid, who could only

look his wrath. I had so hoped that he would sleep until some one came;

but this unfortunate Jeffy had dissipated my hope, and left me in

pitiable dilemma.

In the vain endeavor to restore the scattered influence of Morpheus,

I flew to one of the aids of the mystic god, and beseeching its

assistance, I prepared to administer the draught. I could not find a

spoon on the instant. When I did, I made a mistake in dropping the

opiate, and was obliged to commence anew, and all the while that

handsome face, with large, pleading eyes in it, held me in painful

duress. When I turned towards him and held the glass to his lips, I

trembled, as I had not done, even in the church, when Abraham Axtell and

I stood before the opened entrance into earth. All the words that I that

day had heard in the tower were ringing like clarions in the air, and

they shook me with their vibrant forces.

"Am _I_ in heaven?"

It was the same voice that had said to Miss Axtell, "Will you send me

out again?" that spake these words.

Was he going into delirium again? I was desirous of keeping him upon our

planet, and I said,--

"Oh, no,--they don't need morphine in heaven."

"They need _you_ there, though. You must go _now_," he said; and he made

an effort to take the glass from my hand.

"I have never been in heaven," I said.

"Then they deceive, they deceive, and there isn't any heaven! Oh, what

if after all there shouldn't be such a place?"

He lifted up his one usable hand in agony.

"We wait until we die, before going there," I said; "I am alive, don't

you see?"

"Alive, and not dead? you! whom I killed eighteen years ago, have you

come to reproach me now? Oh, I have suffered, even to atonement, for it!

You would pardon, if you only knew what I have suffered for you."

Surely delirium had returned. I urged the poor man to take the contents

of the glass.

He promised, upon condition of my forgiveness,--forgiveness for having

killed me, who never had been killed, who was surely alive. Jeffy had

come in again, and had listened to the pleading.

"Why don't you tell him yes, Miss Anna? He doesn't know a word he's

sayin'. It'll keep him quiet like; he's like a baby," he whispered, with

a covert pull at my dress by way of impressment.

And so, guided by Chloe's boy, I said, "I forgive."

"Why don't you go, if you forgive me? I don't like to keep you here,

when you belong up there"; and he pointed his words by the aid of his

available hand.

I knew then _why_ Miss Axtell had loved this man: it was simply one of

those cruel, compulsory offerings up of self, that allure one, in open

sight of torture, on to the altar. Oh, poor woman! why hath thy Maker

so forsaken thee? And in mute wonder at this most wondrous wrong, that

crept into mortal life when the serpent went out through Eden and

left an opening in the Garden, I forgot for the while my present

responsibility, in compassionate pity for the pale, beautiful lady in

Redleaf, into whose heart this man had come,--unwillingly, I knew, when

I looked into his face, and yet, _having come, must grow into its Eden,

even unto the time that Eternity shadows;_ and I sent out the arms of my

spirit, and twined them invisibly around her, who truly had spoken when

she said, "I want you," with such hungry tones. God, the Infinite,

has given me comprehension of such women, has given me His own loving

pity,--in little human grains, it is true, but they come from "the

shining shore." "Miss Axtell does want me," I thought; "she is right,--I

am gladness to her."

"Will you go?" came from the invalid.

"A woman, loving thus, never comes alone into a friend's heart,"

something said; "you must receive her shadow"; and I looked at the

person who had said, "Will you go?"

There are various words used in the dictionary of life, descriptive

of men such as him now before me. They mostly are formed in syllables

numbering four and five, which all integrate in the one word

_irresistible_: how pitifully I abhor that word!--every letter has a

serpent-coil in it. "Love thy neighbor even as thyself." It is good that

these words came just here to wall themselves before the torrent that

might not have been stayed until I had laid the mountain of my thought

upon the sycophantic syllabication that the world loves to "lip" unto

the world,--the false world, that, blinded, blinds to blinder blindness

those that fain would behold. There is a crying out in the earth for

a place of torment; there are sins for which we want what God hath

prepared for the wicked.

"Are you going?"--and this time there was plaintive moaning in the

accents.

"You must take him in, too," my spirit whispered; and I acted the "I

will" that formed in the mental court where my soul sat enthroned,--my

own judge.

"Oh, no, I am not going away," I said; "I am come to stay with you,

until some one else comes."

A certain resignment of opposition seemed to be effected. I knew it

would be so,--it is in all such natures,--and he seemed intent upon

making atonement for his imaginary wrong, since I would stay.

"Mary, I didn't mean to kill you," he said; "I wouldn't have destroyed

your young life; oh! I wouldn't;--but I did! I did!"

"You make some strange mistake; you ought not to talk," I urged,

surprised at this second time being called Mary.

"Yes, I guess 'twas a mistake,--you're right, all a mistake,--I didn't

mean to kill you; but I did _him_, though. Oh! I wanted to destroy

him,--_he hadn't any pity, he wouldn't yield_. But it's _you_, Mary,

_you_ oughtn't to hear me say such things of _him_."

"I am not Mary, I am Miss Percival; and you may tell me."

"I beg pardon, I had no right to call you Mary; but it is there, now, on

your tomb-stone in the old church-yard,--Mary Percival,--there isn't any

Miss there. Do they call you Miss Percival in heaven?"--and he began to

sing, deep, stirring songs of rhythmic melody, that catch up individual

existences and bear them to congregated continents, where mountains sing

and seas respond, amid the _encore_ of starry spheres.

O Music! if we could but divine thee, dear divinity, thou mightst be

less divine! then let us be content to be divinized in thee!--and I was.

I let him sing, knowing that it was in delirium; and for the moment my

wonder ceased concerning Miss Axtell's love for Herbert.

This while, Jeffy stood speechless, transfused into melody. Whence came

this love of Africans for harmonious measure? Oh, I remember: the scroll

of song whereon were written the accents of the joyed morning-stars,

when they grew jubilant that earth stood create, was let fall by an

angel upon Afric's soil. No one of the children of the land was found of

wisdom sufficient to read the hieroglyphs; therefore the sacred roll was

divided among the souls in the nation: unto each was given one note from

the divine whole.

"Jeffy must have received a semi-breve as his portion," I thought, for

he was rapt in ecstasy.

"Oh, sing again!" he said, unconsciously, when, exhausted, the invalid

reached the shore of Silence,--where he did not long linger, for he

changed his song to lament that he could not reach his ship, that would

sail before he could recover; and he made an effort to rise. He fell

back, fainting.

It seemed a great blessing that at this moment the housekeeper

introduced the person Doctor Percival had sent.

That night, and for many after, it seemed, my father looked extremely

anxious. I did not see the patient again until the eventful twenty-fifth

of March was past.

Two days only was I permitted for my visit. Would Miss Axtell expect me?

or had she, it might be, forgotten that she had asked my presence?

My father had not forgotten the obligation of the ring of gold; he made

allusion to it in the moment of parting, and I felt it tightening about

me more and more as the miles of sea and land rolled back over our

separation; and a question, asked long ago and unanswered yet, was

repeated in my mental realm,--"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of

the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" and I said, "I will not

try."

It was evening when I arrived at the parsonage. Sophie was full of sweet

sisterly joy on seeing me, and of surprise when I told her what had

occurred in our father's house. It was so unprecedented, this taking in

a stranger whose name and home were unknown; for I could not tell Sophie

my conviction that father had discovered who the patient was.

"Miss Axtell is almost well." Sophie gave the information before I found

time to ask. "She pleases to be quite charming to me. I hope she will be

equally gracious to you." And so I hoped.

From out the ark of the round year God sends some day-doves of summer

into the barren spring-time, to sing of coming joys and peck the buds

into opening. One of His sending brooded over Redleaf when I walked

forth in its morning-time to redeem my promise.

"Miss Percival! I'm so glad!"

Katie showed me into the room that once I had been so much afraid of.

She did not long leave me there.

"Miss Lettie would like to see you in her room."

Sophie was right. She is almost well.

"Come!" was the sole word that met my entering in; then followed two

small acts, supposed to be conventionalities. Isn't it good that all

suppositions are _not_ based upon truth? I thought it good then. I hope

I may away on to the dawning of the new life.

This was my first seeing of Miss Axtell in her self-light. She said,--

"This is the only day that I have been down in time for

breakfast,"--she, who looked as if the fair Dead-Sea fruits had been all

of sustenance that had dropped through the leaden waves for her; and

an emotion of awe swept past me, borne upon the renewal of the

consciousness that I had been made essential to her.

"I knew that you would come," she continued. "Oh! I have great

confidence in you; you must never disappoint me,--will you?"--and,

playfully, she motioned me to the footstool where she had appointed me a

place on the first night when she told me of her mother, dead.

I assured her that I should. I must begin that moment by mentioning the

time of my visit's duration.

"How long?" and there was import in the tone of her voice.

"I must be at home to-morrow morning."

"No reprieve?"

I answered, "None,"--and turned the circlet of obligation upon my

finger.

"I am glad you told me; I like limits; I wish to know the precise moment

when my rainbows will disband. It's very nice, meeting Fate half-way;

there's consolation in knowing that it will have as far to go as you on

the return voyage."

I smiled; a little inward ripple of gladness sent muscle-waves to my

lips. She noticed it, and her tone changed.

"I see, I see, my good little Anemone! You don't know how exultant it

is to stand alone, above the forest of your fellows,--to lift up your

highest bough of feeling,--to meet the Northland's fiercest courser that

thinks to lay you low. Did you ever turn to see the expression with

which the last leap of wind is met, the peculiar suavity of the bowing

of the boughs, that says as plainly as ever did speaking leaves, '_You

have left me myself_'? You don't understand these things, you small

wind-flower, that have grown sheltered from all storms!"

"One would think not, Miss Axtell, but"--and I paused until she bade me

"Go on."

"Perhaps it is vanity,--I hope not,--but it seems to me that I have a

mirror of all Nature set into the frame of my soul. It isn't a part of

myself; it is a mental telescope, that resolves the actions of all the

people around me into myriads of motives, atomies of inducement, that I

see woven and webbed around them, by the sight-power given. Besides, I

am not an anemone,--oh, no! I am something more substantial."

"I see, very"; and before I could divine her intent, she had lifted up

my face in both her hands and held my eyes in her own intensity of gaze,

as, oh, long ago! I remember my mother to have done, when she doubted my

perfect truth.

Miss Axtell was engaged in looking over old treasured letters, bits of

memory-memoranda, when I arrived. She had laid them aside to greet me,

somewhat hastily, and a rustling commotion testified their feeling at

their summary disposal. Now she sat framed in by the yellow-and-white

foam, that had settled to motionlessness,--an island in the midst of

waves of memory.

"Did you bring my treasures?" were the first words, after investigating

my truth.

"They are safely here."

I gave the package.

She made no mention of former occurrences. She trusted me implicitly,

with that far-deep of confidence that says, "Explanation would be

useless; your spirit recognizes mine." She only said, drooping her regal

head with the slightest dip into motion,--

"I want to tell you a story; it is of people who are, some in heaven and

some upon the earth;--a story with which you must have something to do

for me, because I cannot do it for myself. I did not intend telling so

soon, but my disbanded rainbow lies in the future."

Before commencing, she wandered up and down the room a little, stopped

before the dressing-bureau, brushed back the hair, with many repetitions

of stroke, from the temples wherein so much of worship had been

gathered, smoothed down the swollen arches of veinery that fretted

across either temple's dome, looked one moment into the censers of

incense that burned always with emotionary fires, flashed out a little

superabundant flame into the cold quicksilver, turned the key, fastening

our two selves in, examined the integrity of the latch leading into the

dressing-room beyond, threw up the window-sash,--the same one that Mr.

Axtell had lifted to look out into the night for her,--asked, "should I

be cold, if she left it open?" looked contentment at my negative answer,

rolled the lounge out to where her easy-chair was still vibrating in

memory of her late presence, made me its occupant, reached out for the

package over which I had been guardian, pinioned it between her two

beautiful hands, laid it down one moment to wrap a shawl around me,

then, resuming it, sat where she had when she said, "I want to tell you

a story," and perhaps she was praying. I may never know, but it was many

moments before she made answer to my slight touch, "Yes, child, I have

not forgotten," and with face hidden from me she told me her story.

MISS AXTELL'S STORY.

"Alice Axtell was my sister. Eighteen years ago last August-time she was

here.

"There has been beauty in the Axtell race; in her it was radiant. It

would have been truth to say, 'She is beautiful.'

"I said that it was August-time,--the twenty-seventh day of the month.

Alice and I had been out in the little bay outside of Redcliff beach,

with your sister. You don't remember her: she was like you. Doctor

Percival had given Mary a boat, taught her to row it, and she had that

afternoon given Alice a first lesson in the art. The day went down hot

and sultry; we lingered on the cooler beach until near evening. We

saw clouds lying dark along the western horizon, and that voiceless

lightnings played in them. Then we came home. The air was tiresome, the

walk seemed endless; still Alice and Mary lingered at the gate of your

father's house to say their last words. The mid-summer weariness was

over us both, as we reached home. We came up to this room,--our room

then. Alice said,--

"'I think I shall go to bed, I'm so tired.'

"She closed the blinds. As she did so, a crash of thunder came.

"'We're going to have a thunder-shower, after all,' she said; 'how

quickly it is coming up! Come and see.'

"I looked a moment out. Jet masses of vapor were curling up amid the

stars, blotting out, one by one, their brightness from the sky. Alice

was always timid in thunder-storms. She shuddered, as a second flash

pealed out its thunder, and crept up to me. I put my arms around her,

and rested my cheek against her head. She was trembling violently.

"'Lie down, Allie; let me close the other blinds; don't look out any

longer.'

"Our mother came in.

"'I came to see if the windows were all down,' she said; 'it will rain

in a moment'; and she hurried away, and I heard her closing, one after

another, the windows that had been all day open.

"Alice lay for a long time quietly. The storm uprose with fearful might;

it shook the house in its passing grasp, and I sat by this table,

listening to the music wrought out of the thunderous echoes.

"'Couldn't we have a window open?' Alice asked; 'I feel stifled in

here'; and she went across the room and lifted the sash before I was

aware.

"I looked around, when I heard the noise. The same instant there came a

blinding, dazzling light; then, that awful vacuous rattle in the throat

of thunder that tells it comes in the name of Death the destroyer.

"'Oh, Allie, come away!' I screamed.

"In obedience to my wish, she leaned towards me; but, oh, her face! I

caught her, ere she fell, even. I sent out the wings of my voice, but no

one heard me, no one came. I could not lift her in my arms, so I laid

her upon the floor, and ran down.

"'Go to Alice,--the lightning!' was all I could say, and it was enough.

I heard groans before I gained the street.

"My pale, silent sister was stronger than the storm which flapped its

wings around me and threatened to take me to its eyry; but it did not;

it permitted me to gain Doctor Percival's door. I was dazzled with the

lightning, only my brain was distinct with 'its skeleton of woe,' when I

found myself in your father's house.

"I could not see the faces that were there. I asked for Doctor Percival.

Some one answered, 'He is not come home. What has happened?' and Mary

ran forward in alarm.

"'It is lightning! Oh, come!' was all that I could utter; and with me

there went out into the pouring rain every soul that was there when I

went in.

"'She is dead; there is nothing to be done.'

"Three hours after the stroke, these words came. Then I looked up.

Alice, with her little white face of perfect beauty, lay upon that bed.

Thunder-storms would never more make her tremble, never awake to fear

the spirit gone. It was Doctor Percival from whom these fateful words

came. I had had so much hope! In very desperation of feeling, I strove

to look up to his face. My eyes were arrested before they reached him.

"'By what?' did you ask?"

Her long silence had incited me to question, and she turned her face to

me, and slowly said,--

"By the Lightning of Life.

"Two sisters, in one night,--one unto Death, the other unto Life. Beside

Doctor Percival was standing one. I do not know what he was like, I

cannot tell you; but, believe me, it is solemnly true, that, that

instant, this human being flashed into my heart and soul. I saw, and

felt, and have heard the rolling thunder that followed the flash to this

very hour. It was very hard, over my Alice. If I had only been she, how

much, how much happier it would have been!--and yet it must have been

wiser. She could not have endured to the end. She would have failed in

the bitterness of the trial.

"My Alice! I am devoutly thankful that you are safe in heaven!"--and for

a moment the hands were lifted up from the treasured packet; they closed

over it, and she went on.

"Alice was wrapped up in earth. In the moment when the first fold of the

clod-mantle, that trails about us all at the last, fell protectingly

over her, I was in that condition of superlative misery that cries out

for something to the very welkin that sends down such harsh hardness;

and I hurried my eyes out of the open grave, only to find them again

arrested by the same soul that had stood beside Doctor Percival and

Alice in her death. They said something to me, kinder than ever came out

of the blue vault, and yet they awoke the fever of resistance. I would

have no thought but that of Alice. What right had any other to come in

then and there?

"September came. Its days brought my sorrow to me ever anew. The early

dew baptized it; the great sun laid his hot hand upon its brow and named

it Death, in the name of the Mighty God; and the evening stars looked

down on me, rocking Alice in my soul, and singing lamentful lullabies

to her, sleeping, till such time as Lethean vapors curled through the

horizon of my mind, and hid its formless shadows of suffering.

"Mary Percival was Alice's best friend; as such, she came to comfort and

to mourn with me. One day, it was the latest of September's thirty, Mary

lured me on to the sea-shore, and into her small boat once more. Little

echoes of gladness sprang up from the sea; voices from Alice's silence

floated on the unbroken waves.

"'You look a little like yourself again; I'm so glad to see it!' Mary

said. 'There comes Mr. McKey. I wonder what brings him here.'

"I looked up, and saw, slowly walking on to the point at which Mary was

securing her boat, the possessor of the existence that had come into

mine. There was no way for me to flee, except seaward; and of two

suicides I chose the pleasanter, and I stayed.

"'Who is it, Mary?' I had time to question, and she to answer.

"'It is Bernard McKey; he has come to study medicine in papa's office;

he came the night Alice died.'

"He was too near to permit of questioning more, and so I stood upon the

seashore and saw my fate coming close.

"Mary simply said, 'Good evening,' to him, followed by the requisite

introductory words that form the basis of acquaintance.

"'I think Miss Axtell and I scarcely need an introduction,' he said;

nevertheless he looked the pleasure it had strewed into his field, and

guarded it, as a careful husbandman would choicest seed.

"He asked the style of question which monosyllables can never answer, to

which responding, one has to offer somewhat of herself; and all the

time of that sombre autumn, there grew from out the chasm of the

lightning-stroke luxuriant foliage. I gave it all the resistance of my

nature, yet I knew, as the consumptive knows, that I should be conquered

by my conqueror. It was only the old story of the captive polishing

chains to wear them away; and yet Mr. McKey was simply very civil and

intentionally kind, where he might have been courteously indifferent.

Abraham was away when Bernard McKey came to Redleaf. For more than

twelve months this terrible something had been working its power into

my soul. Yet we were not lovers,"--and Miss Axtell made the

_pronunciamiento_ as if she held the race mentioned in utmost

veneration. "Day by day brought to me new reasons why Bernard McKey must

be unto me only a medical student in Doctor Percival's office, and the

stars sealed all that the day had done; whilst no night of sky was

without a wandering comet, whereon was inscribed, in letters that

flashed every way, the sentence that came with the lightning-stroke;

even storms drowned it not; winter's cold did not freeze it. Verily,

little friend, _I know that God had put it into Creation for me, and yet

there seemed His own law written against it_"; and Miss Axtell's tones

grew very soft and tremulously low, as she said,--

"Mr. McKey had faults that could not, existing in action, make any woman

happy: do you think happiness was meant for woman?"

She waited my answer in the same way that she had done when she was

ill and asked if I liked bitters concealed. She waited as long without

reply. The pause grew oppressive, and I spanned it by an assurance of

individual possessive happiness.

"Anemones never know which way the wind blows, until it comes down close

to the ground," she said; "but souls which are on bleak mountain-summits

_must_ watch whirlwinds, poised in space, and note their airy march. So

I saw, clearly cut into the rock of the future, my own face, with all

the lines and carvings wrought into it that the life of Bernard McKey

would chisel out, and I only waited. I might have waited on forever, for

Mr. McKey had not cast one pebbly word that must send up wavy ripples

from deep spirit-waters; he only wandered, as any other might have

done, upon the shore of my life, along its quiet, dewy sands, above its

chalk-cliffs, and by the side of its green, sloping shores. He never

questioned why rose and fell the waves; he never went down where 'tide,

the moon-slave, sleeps,' to find the foundations of my heart's mainland.

I had only seen him standing at times, as one sees a person upon a

ship's deck, peering off over Earth's blue ocean-cheek, simply in mute,

solemn wonder at what may be beyond, without one wish to speed the ship

on.

"It might have been forever thus, but Abraham came home. He is my

brother, you know. If he made me suffer, he has been made to suffer

with me. Bernard McKey was Doctor Percival's favorite. He made him his

friend, and was everything to him that friend could be. I cannot tell

you my story without mention of my brother, he has been so woven into

every part of it. An unaccountable fancy for the study of medicine

developed itself in his erratic nature soon after he came home; and he

relinquished his brilliant prospects and devoted himself to the little

white office near Doctor Percival's house, with Bernard McKey for his

hourly companion. The two had scarce a thought in common: one was

impulsive, prone to throw himself on the stream of circumstance, to waft

with the wind, and blossom with the spring; the other was the great

mountain-pine, distilling the same aroma in all atmospheres, extending

fibrous roots against Nature's granite, whenceever it comes up. How

could the two harmonize? They could not, and a time of trial came. We

knew, before it came, why Doctor Percival's little white office held

Abraham so many hours in the day. It was because the Mountain-Pine found

in the moss of Redleaf the sweet Trailing-Arbutus."

She asked me if I knew the flower; and when I answered her with my words

of love of it, she said, "she had always thought it was one of Eden's

own bits of blossomry, that, missing man from the hallowed grounds,

crept out to know his fate, and, finding him so forlornly unblest, had

sacrificed its emerald leaves, left in the Garden, and, creeping into

mosses, lived, waiting for man's redemption. We used to call Mary

'The Arbutus,' and it was pleasant to see the great rough branches of

Abraham's nature drooping down, more and more, toward the pink-and-white

pale flower that looked into the sky, from a level as lofty as the

Pine's highest crown. Abraham goes out to search for the type of Mary

every spring"; and rising, she brought to me the waxen buds that were

yet unopened.

I took them in my hands, with the same feeling that I would have done a

tress of Mary's hair, or a fragment that she had handled. I think Miss

Axtell divined this feeling; for she cautiously opened the door leading

into her brother's room, and finding that he was not there, she bade me

"come and see." It was Mary's portrait that once more I looked upon;

framed in a wreath of the trailing-arbutus, it was hanging just where he

could look at it at night, as I my strange tower-key.

We went back. Miss Axtell closed the sash; she was looking weary and

pale. I was afraid she would suffer harm from the continued recital. She

said "No," to my fear,--that "it must all be spoken now, once, and that

forever,"--and I listened unto the story's end.

"One year had passed since Alice's death before Abraham's coming.

Another had almost fled before the eventful time when I began to feel

the weight of my cross. I know not how it came to Abraham's knowledge

that Bernard McKey felt in his soul my presence. I only know that

he came home one night, with a storm of rage whitening his lips and

furrowing his forehead. He came up here, where I was sitting. I had

watched his figure coming through tree-openings from Doctor Percival's

house, and mingled with the memories of the fair young girl whom I had

seen dead by lightning were fears for Mary Percival. For several days

she had been ill, and I knew that Abraham felt anxious; therefore I did

not wonder at his hasty coming in and instant seeking of me. He came

quite close. He wound his face in between me and the darkening sky; he

whispered hoarsely,--

"'Do you care for him?'

"'What is it, Abraham?' I asked, startled by his words and manner, but

with not the faintest idea of the meaning entering in with his words.

"'Bernard McKey, is he anything to you?'

"'You've no right to question me thus,' I said.

"'And you will not answer me?'

"'I will not, Abraham.'

"The next morning Abraham was gone. He had not told me of his intended

absence. He had only left a note, stating the time of his return.

"It was a week ere he came. Mary had not improved in his absence, yet no

one deemed her very ill.

"I dreaded Abraham's coming home, because he had left me in silent

anger; but how could I have replied to his question otherwise than I

did? No one, not Mr. McKey himself, had asked me; and should I give him,

my brother, my answer first?

"Lazily the village-clock swung out the hours that summer's afternoon.

The stroke of three awakened me. I had not seen Mary that day.

"'I would go and see her,' I decided.

"'She was sleeping, the dear child,' Chloe said. 'She would come and

tell me when she was awake, if I would wait.'

"I said that I would stay awhile, and I wandered out under the shade of

the great whispering trees, to wait the waking hour.

"I remember the events of that afternoon, as Mary and Martha must have

remembered the day on which Lazarus came up from the grave unto them.

"The air was still, save a humming in the very tree-tops that must have

been only echoes tangled there, breezes that once blew past. The long

grape-arbor at the end of the lawn looked viny and cool. I walked up and

down under the green archway, until Chloe's words summoned me.

"Mary was 'better,' she said; 'a few days, and she should feel quite

strong, she hoped'; but she looked weary, and I only waited a little

while, until her father and mother came in, and then I went.

"Mr. McKey was sitting in the door of the little white office. He came

out to meet me ere I had reached the street,--asked if I was on my way

home.

"I said 'Yes,' with the lazy sort of languor born of the indolence of

the hour.

"'Have you energy enough for a walk to the sea-shore?' he asked.

"It had been my wish that very day. I had not been there since Mary's

illness. I hesitated in giving an answer. Abraham would be home at

sunset.

"'Don't go, if it is only to please me,' he said.

"'I am going to please myself,' I answered; 'only I wish to be at home

on Abraham's coming.'

"That afternoon, Bernard McKey for the first time told me of himself,

and what the two years in Redleaf had done for him. One month more, and

he should leave it. He put into words the memory of that first look

across the dead. He talked to me, until the sea lost its sunlight

sheen,--until I no longer heard its beat of incoming tide,--until I

forgot the hour for Abraham's coming. It was he who reminded me of it.

Once more we paced the sands, already sown with our many footsteps,

that the advancing waters would soon overwhelm. After that we went

village-ward. The gloaming had come down when we reached home.

"'Abraham must have been an hour here,' I thought, as alone I went in.

"He met me in the hall.

"'Where have you been, Lettie?' was his greeting.

"'On the sands.'

"'Not alone?'

"'No, Abraham; Bernard McKey has been with me.'

"'By what right?' he demanded, with that mighty power of voice that is

laid up within him for especial occasions.

"'By the right that I gave him, by the right that is his to walk with

me,' I said; for I grew defiant, and felt a renewal of strength, enough

to tell Abraham the truth.

"Don't start so, Anemone," she said to me. "You think defiance

unwomanly, and so do I; but it was for once only, and I felt that my

brother had no right to question me.

"But one word came from his lips, as he confronted me there, with folded

arms; it was,--

"'When?'

"'This very afternoon, Abraham.'

"Mother came out at the moment. She saw the cloud on Abraham's brow even

in the dim light. She asked, 'What is it?' and Abraham answered us both

at the same time.

"He had been to the home of Bernard McKey. He proved to my mother's

utmost satisfaction that her daughter had no right to care for one like

Bernard McKey. He did not know the right that came on that night almost

two years before. He saw that his proofs were idle to me; but he said

'he had another, one that I would accept, for I was an Axtell.'

"'Yes, Abraham, I am an Axtell, and I shall prove my right to the name,

come what will'; and without waiting to hear more, I glided into the

darkness up-stairs.

"For a long time I heard mother and Abraham talking together; it seemed

as if they would never cease. At last, mother sent up to know if I was

not coming to take my tea. I had forgotten its absence till then. I went

down. A half-hour later, during which time a momentous mist of silence

hung over the house, I heard steps approaching. You know that it was

summer time, and the windows were all thrown open, after the heat of the

day. I had been wondering where every one was gone. I recognized both of

the comers, as their footsteps fell upon the walk, but I heard no words.

Oh, would there had been none to come! I heard Abraham go on up the

stairs, and knew that he was searching for me. I knew who had come in

with him, and I arose from my concealment in the unlighted library, and

went into the parlor. It was Mr. McKey who sat there.

"'What is it?' I asked,--for a gnome of ill was walking up and down in

my brain, as we had walked on the sands so few hours before.

"'What is it? I don't know,' he said. 'Your brother asked me to come

over for a few minutes.'

"Evidently Abraham had not shown him one coal of the fire that burned

under his cool seeming. That is the way with these mountain pine-trees:

one never knows how deep into volcanic fires their roots are plunged.

"'Something has happened,' I whispered. 'Whatever comes, bear it

bravely.'

"He laughed, a low, rippling laugh, like the breaking up of ever so many

songs all at once; and the notes had not floated down to rest, when

mother and Abraham came in. Mr. McKey arose to greet my mother. She

stood proudly erect, her regal head unbending, her eyes straight on,

into an endless future, in which he must have no part,--that I saw.

Whatever he discerned there, he, too, stood before her and my brother.

Abraham handed me a letter, saying, 'Read that, for your proof.'

"And I read. The letter bore the signature of Bernard McKey. The date

was the night of Alice's death. The words descriptive of the scene

chiselled into my brain were on that fair paper-surface; and there were

others, words which only one man may write to one woman. I read it on to

the end.

"'You are right, Abraham,' I said, 'and I thank you for my proof'; and

without one word for the pale, handsome face that stood beseechingly

between me and the great future, through which I gazed, I went forth

alone into the starry night. Anywhere, to be alone with God, leaving

that trio of souls in there; and as I fled past the windows, I heard my

mother speak terrible words to one that was, yes, even then, myself.

Some angel must have come down the starry way to guide me; for, without

seeking it, without consciousness of whither I fled, I found myself near

the old church, where, from the day of my solemn baptism within its

walls, I had gone up to the weekly worship. I crept up close to the

door. In the shadow there no one would see me; and so, upon the hard

stones, I writhed through the anguish of the fire and iceberg that made

war in my heart.

"Then came unto me the old inheritance, the gift of towering pride; and

I said unto myself, 'No one shall think I sorrow; no one shall know that

an Axtell has sipped from a poisoned cup; no one shall see a leaf of

myrtle in my garden of life'; and from off the friendly granite steps

that had received me in my hour of bitterness, I went back to my home.

"What, could have happened there, that I had not been missed? Father was

absent from Redleaf. Bernard McKey was coming down the walk. I hid in

the shrubbery, and let him pass. Oh, would that I had spoken to him,

then, there! It would have saved so much misery on the round globe!

"But I did not. I stood breathless until he entered Doctor Percival's

house; then I waited a moment to determine my own course; I wanted to

gain my room undiscovered. I saw the same figure come out; I knew it by

the light that the open door threw around it; and a moment later, in the

still air,--I knew the sound, it was the unlocking of the little white

office. Then I stole in, and fled to my refuge. No one had discovered my

absence.

"The night went by. I did not sleep. I did not weep,--oh, no! it was not

a case for tears; there are some sorrows that cannot be counted out in

drops; a flood comes, a great freshet rises in the soul, and whirls

spirit, mind, and body on, on, until the Mighty Hand comes down and

lifts the poor wreck out of the flood, and dries it in the sun of His

absorption.

"It was morning at last. Slowly up the ascent, to heights of glory,

walked the stars, waving toward earth, as they went, their wafting of

golden light, and sending messages of love to the dark, round world,

over which they had kept such solemn watch,--sending them down, borne

by rays of early morning; and still I sat beside the window, where all

through the night I had suffered. My mother and Abraham had sought to

see me, but I had answered, with calm words, that I chose to be alone;

and they had left me there, and gone to their nightly rest."

Miss Axtell hid her face a little while; then, lifting it up, she went

to the window so often mentioned, beckoned me thither, pointed to the

house where my life had commenced, to a door opening out on the eastern

side, and said,--

"I wish you to look at that door one moment; out of it came my doom that

midsummer's morning. Light had just gained ascendency over darkness,

when I saw Chloe come out. I knew instantly that something had happened

there. The poor creature crept out of the house,--I saw her go,--and

kneeling down behind that great maple-tree, she lifted up her arms to

heaven, and I heard, or thought I heard her, moaning. Then, whilst I

watched, she got up, looked over at our house, from window to window;

once more she raised her hands, as if invoking some power for help, and

went in.

"I brushed back the hair that my fingers had idly threaded in unrest,

looked one moment, in the dim twilight of morning, to see what changes

my war-fare had wrought, then, cautiously, breathlessly, for fear of

awakening some one, I went out. The night-dew lay heavy on the lawn. I

heeded it not. I knew that trouble had come to Doctor Percival's house.

I went to the door that Chloe had opened. No one seemed awake; deep

stillness brooded over and in the dwelling. Could I have been mistaken?

Whilst I stood in doubt whether to go or stay, there came a long,

sobbing moan, that peopled the dwelling with woe.

"It came from Mary's room. Thither I went. There stood Doctor and Mrs.

Percival beside Mary, and she--was dead.

"I shudder now, as I did then, though eighteen years have rolled their

wheels of misery between,--shudder, as I look in memory into that room

again, and see your father standing in the awful grief that has no

voice, see your mother lifting up her words of moaning, up where I so

late had watched the feet of stars walking into heaven. I don't know how

long it was, I had lost the noting of time, but I remember growing into

rigidness. I remember Bernard McKey's wild, wretched face in the room; I

remember hearing him ask if it was all over. I remember Abraham's coming

in; I _felt_, when through his life the east-wind went, withering it up

within him. I do not know how I went home. I asked no questions. Mary

was dead; she had gone whither Alice went. It seemed little consolation

to me to ask when or how she died.

"Father came home that day. Mother forgot me for Abraham: love of him

was her life. Father did not know, no one had told him, the events of

the night before; he thought me sorrowing for Mary, and so I was; my

grief seemed weak and small before this reality of sorrow.

"It was late in the day, and I was trying to get some sleep, when Chloe

sent a request to see me. I had not seen her since I knew why she had

hid her suffering behind the tree in the morning. I saw that she had

something to say beside telling me of Mary; for she looked cautiously

around the room, as if fearing other ears might be there to hear.

"'Oh! oh! Miss Lettie,' she said, 'I stayed with Miss Mary last night. I

must have gone to sleep when she went away; but I'm afraid, I'm afraid

it wasn't the sickness that killed her.'

"'What then? what was it, Chloe?' I asked, whilst the tears fell fast

from her eyes.

"'Doctor Percival gave her some medicine just afore he went to bed,

and she said she was "very sick"; she said so a good many times, Miss

Lettie, afore I went to sleep.'

"'You don't think it was the medicine that killed her?'--for a horrible

thought had come in to me.

"'I hope not, but I'm afraid'; and with a still lower, whispering tone,

and another frightened look about the room, Chloe took from under her

shawl a small cup. She held it up close to me, and her voice penetrated

with its meaning all the folds of my thought,--'Chloe's afraid Miss Mary

drank her death in here.'

"'Give it to me,' I said; and I snatched at the cup. Catching it from

her, I looked into it. The draught had been taken; the sediment only lay

dried upon it.

"'You think so, Chloe? How could it have been? You say Doctor Percival

gave it to her?'

"She said that 'Mr. Abraham had been in to see her a little while,--only

a few moments. Something was the matter with him. Miss Mary talked,

just a few words; what they were she did not hear,--she was in the next

room,--only, when he went away, she heard her say, "Don't do it; you may

be wrong, and then you'll be sorry as long as you live"; and then

Mr. Abraham shut the door heavy-like and was gone. Afterwards Doctor

Percival came up,--said Miss Mary must sleep, she had more fever; asked

her so many kind questions, and was just going down to go to the office

for something to give her, when he met Master McKey coming in. I heard

my master ask him to go for it. And I doesn't know anything more, Miss

Lettie. I came to tell you.'

"I asked her 'if she had told any one else? if any one had seen the

cup?'

"She said, 'No'; and I made her promise me that she would never mention

it, never speak of it to any living soul.

"She promised, and she has kept her promise faithfully to this day."

I thought, at this pause in the story, of Chloe's hiding chloroform from

me.

"I had myself seen Bernard McKey go out to the office that night. Had

he given poison to Mary Percival? And with the question the hot answer

came, 'Never!--he did not do it!'

"Chloe went, leaving the cup with me.

"I knew that I must see Bernard. How? The household were absorbed in

Abraham. His condition perilled his reason. Doctor Percival came over

every hour to see him, and I was sure that his hair whitened from time

to time. It was terrible to hear Abraham declaring that he had killed

Mary,--that he might have granted her request. And as often as his eyes

fell upon me, his words changed to, 'It was for you that I did it,--for

my sister!' And whilst all sorrowed and watched him, I sought my

opportunity. 'It would never come to me,' I thought, 'I must go to it';

and under cover of looking upon the face of Mary, I went out to seek

Bernard.

"We met before I reached the house; we should have passed in silence,

had I not spoken. It was the same hour as that in which we had come from

the sands the night before. What a horrible lifetime had intervened! I

said that 'I had some words for him.' He stood still in the air that

throbbed in waves over me. He was speechlessly calm just then.

"'I expected no words after my judgment,' at length he said,--for I knew

not how to open my terrible theme; 'will you tell me on what evidence

you judge?'

"What a trifle then seemed any merely human love in the presence of

Death! I was almost angry that he should once think of it.

"'It is something of more importance than the human affection with which

you play,' I said. 'It is a life, the life of Mary Percival, that last

night went out,--and how? Was it by this cup?'--and I handed the cup to

him.

"He looked simple amazement, as he would have done, had it been a rock

or flower; he did not offer to take it,--still I held it out.

"'Will you examine the contents,' I asked, 'and report to me the

result?'

"'Certainly I will, Miss Axtell,' he said; and with it he walked to the

office.

"I watched him through the window. I saw him coolly apply various tests.

The third one seemed satisfactory.

"He came to the door. I was very near, and went in

"'This is nothing Miss Mary had,--it is poison,' he said.

"He was innocent; I knew it in the very depth of my soul. How could I

tell him the deed his hand had done? But I must, and I did. I told him

how Chloe had brought the cup to me. When I had done, he said,--

"'You believe this of me?'

"I answered,--

"'The cup is now in your hand; judge you of its work'; and I told him

how I had seen him come out the night before,--that I was in the

shrubbery when he went to the office.

"The words of his answer came; they were iron in my heart, though spoken

not to me.

"'O my God, why hast Thou let me do this?' he cried, and went past me

out of the little white office,--out, as I had done, into the open air,

in my sorrow, the night before.

"I would not lose sight of him; I followed on; and, as I went, I thought

I heard a rustling in the leaves. A momentary horror swept past me, lest

some one had been watching,--listening, perhaps,--but I did not pause.

I must know how, where, Bernard would hide his misery. It was not quite

dark; I could not run through the night, as I had done before; I must

follow on at a respectable pace, stop to greet the village-people who

were come out in the cool of the evening, and all the while keep in view

that figure, hastening, for what I knew not, but on to the sands, whilst

those whom I met stayed me to ask how Mary Percival died. I passed the

last of the village-houses. There was nothing before me now but Nature

and this unhappy soul. I lost sight of him; I came to the sands; I saw

only long, low flats stretching far out,--beyond them the line of foam.

The moon was not yet gone; but its crescent momently lessened its light.

I went up and down the shore two or three times, going on a little

farther each time, meeting nothing,--nothing but the fear that stood on

the sands before me, whichever way I turned. It bent down from the sky

to tell me of its presence; it came surging up behind me; and one awful

word was on its face and in its voice. I remember shutting my eyes to

keep it out; I remember putting my fingers into my ears to still its

voice. I was so helpless, so alone to do, so threadless of action,

that--_I prayed_.

"People pray in this world from so many causes,--it matters not what

or how; the hour for prayer comes into every life at some time of its

earthly course, whether softly falling and refreshing as the early rain,

or by the north-wind's icy path. Mine came then, on the sands; my spirit

went out of my mortality unto God for help,--solely because that which I

wanted was not in me, not in all the earth.

"I stooped down to see if the figure I sought was outlined on the rim of

sky that brightened at the sea's edge: it was not there, not seaward.

I tried to call: the air refused the weight of my voice; it went no

farther than the lips, out of which it quivered and fell: I could not

call. I took the dark tide-mark for my guide, and began searching

landward. I went a little way, then stopped to look and listen: no

sight, no sound. The long sedge-grass gave rustling sighs of motion, as

I passed near, and disturbed the air for a moment. A night-bird uttered

its cry out of the tall reeds. The moon went down. The tide began to

come in; with it came up the wind. The memory of Alice, of Mary, walked

with and did not leave me, until I gained the little cove wherein Mary's

boat lay secure. The tide had not reached it. Mary's boat! I remember

thinking--a mere drop of thought it was, as I hurried on, but it held

all the animalcules of emotion that round out a lifetime--that Mary

never more would come to unloose the bound boat, never more in it go

forth to meet the joys that wander in from unknown shores. I saw the

boat lying dark along the water's edge. 'I would run down a moment,' I

thought, 'run down to speak a word of comfort, as if it were a living

thing.'

"Mary's boat was not alone; it had a companion. I thought it was

Bernard. I drew near and spoke his name. Doctor Percival answered me.

I do not think that he recognized my voice. He turned around with a

startled movement, for I was quite close, and asked, 'Who is it?'

"I did not answer. I turned and fled away into the darkness, across the

sands, that answer no footsteps with echoes. It was a comfort to feel

that he was out there, between me and the boundless space of sea.

"When I draw near the confines of Hereafter's shore, I think I shall

feel the same kind of comfort, if some soul that I knew has gone out

just before me; it will cape the boundary-line of 'all-aloneness.'"

Miss Axtell must have forgotten that she was talking to me, as she

retraced her steps and thoughts of that night, for, with this thought,

she seemed to "wander out into silence."

Katie brought her back by coming up to say that "Mr. Abraham was waiting

to know if she would go out a little while, it was so fine."

Miss Axtell said that "she would not go,--she would wait."

Katie went to carry the message. Miss Axtell wandered a little. Between

her words and memories I picked up the thread for her, and she went on

before me.

"I took the direction of the village-pier, when I fled from Doctor

Percival. An unusual number of boats had come in. I heard noises amid

the shipping. At any other time I should have avoided the place. Now I

drew near.

"Two men were slowly walking down the way. I heard one of them ask, 'Do

you know who it is?'

"The other replied, 'No, I never saw him before; we had better watch

him; he went on in a desperate way. I've seen it before, and it ended

in'----

"He did not finish, although I was thirsting for the words; they both

seemed arrested suddenly, then started on, and I watched whither they

went.

"There was now no light, save that of the stars. I could scarcely keep

them in sight. I went nearer,--hid myself behind one of the posts on the

pier. They had gone upon one of the boats,--that which lay farthest down

the stream. It was Bernard that they watched. I found him with my eyes

before they reached where he stood. A boy came singing from his daily

work; he passed close beside me, and, as he went, he beat upon the post

with a boat's oar. I waited until I could come from my hiding-place

without his seeing; then I went after him. I sent him for 'the gentleman

that had gone down there,' telling him to say that 'a lady wished to see

him.'

"Bernard came. I told him that I had been searching for him on the

sands,--that I wanted to talk to him; and he and I walked on again,

village-ward, as we had done on the last night. It was very hard to

begin, to open the cruel theme,--to say to this person, who walked with

folded arms, and eyes that I knew had no external sight, what I thought;

but I must. When I had said all that I would have said to any other

human soul, under like darkness, he lighted up the night of his sin with

strange fires. He poured upon his family's past the light hereditary.

Abraham had been true in his statements. Bernard McKey was not

well-born. He told me this: that his father had been a destroyer of

life; that God had been his Judge, and had now set the seal of the

father's sin into the son's heart. Oh, it was fearful, this tide of

agony with which that soul was overwhelmed! He pictured his deed.

Abraham had found out the crime of his father, had cruelly sent it home

on his own head, had said that a murderer's son could never find rest in

the family of Axtell, had sent him forth, with hatred in his heart, to

work out in shadow the very deed his father had wrought in substance, to

destroy Mary Percival, the child of his best friend, and to strike from

off the earth Abraham's arch of light. It was wonderful: a chance, a

change, had killed Mary.

"Doctor Percival had that very afternoon, while we were gone, wrought

changes in the little white office; hence the fatal mistake. Bernard had

gone in, taken up a bottle from the very place where the article wanted

had stood for two years, poured its contents into the cup, carried it

in, and no hand stayed him. He was too blinded by suffering to see for

himself. Doctor Percival's hand gave the draught, and Mary was dead.

What should be done?

"'What shall I do? What would you have me to do?' asked Bernard.

"We were come to the church on our way. I stayed my steps, and thought

of the letter that Abraham had given me; it came up for the first time

since I knew of Mary's death. But I did not allude to it. I could not

acknowledge, even to him, that I knew another had received the words

that should have been spoken only to me; and sincerely I told him that

he must go away, at once and for always,--that the deed his hand had

unknowingly done must be borne in swift, solemn current through his

life,--that he must live beside it until it reached the ocean to come:

it could do no good to reveal it; it could arouse only new misery; it

seemed better that it should be written on marble and in memory that

'God took her.'

"He took up the silence that came after my words, and filled it with an

echoing question:--

"'If I go out, and bear this deed, as you say bear it, in silence and in

suffering, will you,--you, to whom God has given a good inheritance, who

know not the rush and roar of any evil in your soul, whose spring rises

far back in ancestral natures,--will you stand between me and all this

that I must bear? Will you be my rock, set here, in this village? May I

come back at times, and tell you how I endure? If you will promise me

this, I will go.'

"Why should he come to me? why not to the other one, to whom he told of

Alice's death two years ago? He did not know that pride was the ever

vernal sin of _my_ race, that I had it to battle with. But I conquered,

and promised I would help him, since it was all I had to do. A few more

words were spoken; he was to write to me when he would come; and we

parted, there, at the old church-door,--he promising to live, to try and

make atonement for his sin,--I to hold his deed in keeping, alone of all

the world, save Chloe, and in her I had trust. I did not see him again:

he left the following day.

"You remember that I heard a rustling in the shrubbery, when Bernard

fled from the office. It was my mother, watching me. She had seen and

heard sufficient to convince her of what had been done. Mothers are

endowed with wonderful intuitive perception. Abraham had been her one

love from his childhood. Now came a strife in her nature. Bernard McKey

had wronged Abraham, had taken the light out of his life, and a great

longing for his punishment came up. How should it be effected? She

believed that open judgment would awaken resistance in me,--that I would

stand beside him then, in the face of all the world, and recompense him

for his punishment,--I, an Axtell, her daughter. So she came to me with

a compromise. She told me that she had heard what had been said,--that

she knew the deed, had seen the cup,--that Abraham, knowing the act,

would never forgive it, though done, as she acknowledged, in error;

and she, my mother, to save the family, made conditions. Her knowledge

should remain hers only, if Bernard McKey should remain such as he now

was to me,--never to be more.

"'An easy condition,' I thought, 'since the letter Abraham gave'; and I

said the two words to my mother,--

"'I promise.'

"'My daughter,' was her only answer; and she touched her child's

forehead with two burning lips, and went away to watch Abraham through

the night,--watch him tread the dark way, without Mary.

"Where now was the Mountain-Pine? higher than the Arbutus?

"Our mother had her trial. When she heard Abraham reproaching himself

with having brought on a return of fever by refusing Mary's wish, of

having been the means of her death, I know her heart ached to say, 'It

was not you, Abraham, it was Bernard McKey who killed her.' But no, she

did not; family pride towered above affection, and she was true to her

promise, true to the last. She died with the secret hers.

"Bernard McKey's absence was much wondered at, although it began only

one month earlier than the appointed time. Doctor Percival mourned his

going as if he had been his son; he spoke to me of it. Mary was buried.

I remember your little face on her burial-day; it was bright, and

unconscious of the sad scene"; and Miss Axtell now sought to look into

it, but it was not to be seen. I think she must have forgotten, at

times, that it was to Mary's sister that she was telling her story. She

waited a little, until I asked her to "tell me more."

"The face of that Autumn grew rosy, wrinkled, and died upon Winter's

snowy bed; and yet I lived, and Abraham, and Bernard McKey perhaps,--I

knew not. The year was nearly gone since Mary died, and no ray of

knowledge had come from him. Every day I re-read those words written to

some fair woman-soul, until after so many readings they began to take

root in my heart. I found it out one day, and I began vigorously to tear

them up. It was on the evening of the same day that Abraham came home:

he had been away for several weeks. He left, with intentional seeming, a

paper where I should see it; he had read with almost careless eyes what

mine fell upon, for he believed that Bernard McKey was forgotten by me;

he had kindly forborne to mention his name, since that one night wherein

all our misery grew. I found there what I believed to be his death:

the name and age were his own; the place was nothing,--_he_ might be

anywhere. My mother saw it, and a gladness, yes, a gladness came into

her face: I watched its coming up. She thought she might now tell

Abraham; but no, I held her to the promise. It had but two conditions:

mine was to be perpetual; hers must be so.

"After that I grew pitiful for the poor heart that must have been made

sorrowful by these words that never more would come into it, and so I

picked up the trembling little roots that had been cast out, put them

back into the warm soil, and let them grow: they might join hers now,

for together they could twine around immortal bowers; and, as they grew,

a great longing came up to go out and find this woman-soul who had drawn

out such words from lips sealed forever. But no chance happened: no one

came to our quiet village from the remote town in which she was when

these words, that now were become mine, were penned."

MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN."

In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam,

my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a

telegraphic messenger. The air had been heavy all day with rumors of

battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with

throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might

bring.

We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted. I took the

envelope from his hand, opened it, and read:--

Hagerstown 17th

To---- H----

Capt. H---- wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at

Keedysville

WILLIAM G LEDUC

_Through_ the neck,--no bullet left in wound. Windpipe, food-pipe,

carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable, vessels, a

great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,--ought

to kill at once, if at all. _Thought not_ mortal, or _not thought_

mortal,--which was it? The first; that is better than the second would

be.--"Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland." Leduc?

Leduc? Don't remember that name.--The boy is waiting for his money. A

dollar and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen cents? Don't keep

that boy waiting,--how do we know what messages he has got to carry?

The boy _had_ another message to carry. It was to the father of

Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was

grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough,

a town a few miles this side of Keedysville. This I learned the

next morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central

Telegraph-Office.

Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the

quarter past two o'clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an

accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or

pressing emergency. I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the cars.

I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose society

would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my own, and

whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim.

It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished

apart, that I mean to give my "Atlantic" readers an account. They must

let me tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that

interested or amused me, and which a certain leisurely class of elderly

persons, who sit at their firesides and never travel, will, I hope,

follow with a kind of interest. For, besides the main object of my

excursion, I could not help being excited by the incidental sights

and occurrences of a trip which to a commercial traveller or a

newspaper-reporter would seem quite commonplace and undeserving of

record. There are periods in which all places and people seem to be in

a conspiracy to impress us with their individuality,--in which every

ordinary locality seems to assume a special significance and to claim

a particular notice,--in which every person we meet is either an old

acquaintance or a character; days in which the strangest coincidences

are continually happening, so that they get to be the rule, and not the

exception. Some might naturally think that anxiety and the weariness of

a prolonged search after a near relative would have prevented my taking

any interest in or paying any regard to the little matters around me.

Perhaps it had just the contrary effect, and acted like a diffused

stimulus upon the attention. When all the faculties are wide-awake

in pursuit of a single object, or fixed in the spasm of an absorbing

emotion, they are often-times clairvoyant in a marvellous degree in

respect to many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so forcibly

illustrated in his sonnet on the Boy of Windermere, and as Hawthorne

has developed with such metaphysical accuracy in that chapter of his

wondrous story where Hester walks forth to meet her punishment.

Be that as it may,--though I set out with a full and heavy heart, though

many times my blood chilled with what were perhaps needless and unwise

fears, though I broke through all my habits without thinking about them,

which is almost as hard in certain circumstances as for one of our young

fellows to leave his sweet-heart and go into a Peninsular campaign,

though I did not always know when I was hungry nor discover that I was

thirsting, though I had a worrying ache and inward tremor underlying all

the outward play of the senses and the mind, yet it is the simple truth

that I did look out of the car-windows with an eye for all that passed,

that I did take cognizance of strange sights and singular people, that I

did act much as persons act from the ordinary promptings of curiosity,

and from time to time even laugh very nearly as those do who are

attacked with a convulsive sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of the

diaphragm.

By a mutual compact, we talked little in the cars. A communicative

friend is the greatest nuisance to have at one's side during a

railroad-journey, especially if his conversation is stimulating and in.

itself agreeable. "A fast train and a 'slow' neighbor," is my motto.

Many times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized

into an hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the

vibrations into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging

themselves in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in

Chladni's famous experiment,--fresh ideas coming up to the surface,

as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's

wagon,--all this without volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping

the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in

the pocket keeps them wound up,--many times, I say, just as my brain was

beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication,

some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has

come up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken

my day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along

my fancies and hitched on the old weary omnibus-team of every-day

associations, fatigued my hearing and attention, exhausted my voice, and

milked the breasts of my thought dry during the hour when they should

have been filling themselves full of fresh juices. My friends spared me

this trial.

So, then, I sat by the window and enjoyed the slight tipsiness

produced by short, limited, rapid oscillations, which I take to be the

exhilarating stage of that condition which reaches hopeless inebriety

in what we know as sea-sickness. Where the horizon opened widely, it

pleased me to watch the curious effect of the rapid movement of near

objects contrasted with the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from

a right-hand window, for instance, the fences close by glide swiftly

backward, or to the right, while the distant hills not only do not

appear to move backward, but look by contrast with the fences near at

hand as if they were moving forward, or to the left; and thus the whole

landscape becomes a mighty wheel revolving about an imaginary axis

somewhere in the middle-distance.

My companions proposed to stay at one of the best-known and

longest-established of the New-York caravansaries, and I accompanied

them. We were particularly well lodged, and not uncivilly treated. The

traveller who supposes that he is to repeat the melancholy experience of

Shenstone, and have to sigh over the reflection that he has found "his

warmest welcome at an inn," has something to learn at the offices of

the great city-hotels. The unheralded guest who is honored by mere

indifference may think himself blest with singular good-fortune.

If the despot of the Patent Annunciator is only mildly contemptuous in

his manner, let the victim look upon it as a personal favor. The coldest

welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's

palace, the most icy reception that a country-cousin ever received

at the city-mansion of a mushroom millionnaire, is agreeably tepid,

compared to that which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the more or

less elevated circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up

to enter your name on his dog's-eared register. I have less hesitation

in unburdening myself of this uncomfortable statement, as on this

particular trip I met with more than one exception to the rule.

Officials become brutalized, I suppose, as a matter of course. One

cannot expect an office-clerk to embrace tenderly every stranger who

comes in with a carpet-bag, or a telegraph-operator to burst into tears

over every unpleasant message he receives for transmission. Still,

humanity is not always totally extinguished in these persons. I

discovered a youth in the telegraph-office of the Continental Hotel, in

Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, and as graciously

responsive to inoffensive questions, as if I had been his childless

opulent uncle, and my will not made.

On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with

sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of

the car may be made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a

traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust

looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are

common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by,

feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. I had a mighty

passion come over me to be the captain of one,--to glide back and

forward upon a sea never roughened by storms,--to float where I could

not sink,--to navigate where there is no shipwreck,--to lie languidly

on the deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a

finger: there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy, but

who has not often envied a cobbler in his stall?

The boys cry the "N'-York _Heddle_," instead of "Herald"; I remember

that years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end

of the dumb-bell suburb. A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the

waters, so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy

is not distinguished; _nez camus_, as a Frenchman would say; no

illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town

looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that

trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves,

elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like

the walls of a hock-glass.

I went straight to the house in Walnut Street where the Captain would be

heard of, if anywhere in this region. His lieutenant-colonel was there,

gravely wounded; his college-friend and comrade in arms, a son of the

house, was there, injured in a similar way; another soldier, brother

of the last, was there, prostrate with fever. A fourth bed was waiting

ready for the Captain, but not one word had been heard of him, though

inquiries had been made in the towns from and through which the father

had brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel. And so my search

is, like a "Ledger" story, to be continued.

I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore.

Our company was gaining in number as it moved onwards. We had found upon

the train from New York a lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our

most spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel of the ----th

Regiment, going to seek her wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying

directly in our track. She was the light of our party while we were

together on our pilgrimage, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but

courageous,

--"ful plesant and amiable of port,

--estatelich of manere,

And to ben holden digne of reverence."

On the road from Philadelphia, I found in the same car with our party

Dr. William Hunt, of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faithfully

attended the Captain, then the Lieutenant, after a wound received at

Ball's Bluff, which came very near being mortal. He was going upon an

errand of mercy to the wounded, and found he had in his memorandum-book

the name of our lady-companion's husband, who had been commended to his

particular attention.

Not long after leaving Philadelphia, we passed a solitary sentry keeping

guard over a short railroad-bridge. It was the first evidence that we

were approaching the perilous borders, the marches where the North and

the South mingle their angry hosts, where the extremes of our so-called

civilization meet in conflict, and the fierce slave-driver of the Lower

Mississippi stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller from the

banks of the Aroostook. All the way along, the bridges were guarded more

or less strongly. In a vast country like ours, communications play a far

more complex part than in Europe, where the whole territory available

for strategic purposes is so comparatively limited. Belgium, for

instance, has long been the bowling-alley where kings roll cannon-balls

at each other's armies; but here we are playing the game of live

ninepins _without any alley_.

We were obliged to stay in Baltimore over-night, as we were too late for

the train to Frederick. At the Eutaw House, where we found both comfort

and courtesy, we met a number of friends, who beguiled the evening hours

for us in the most agreeable manner. We devoted some time to procuring

surgical and other articles, such as might be useful to our friends, or

to others, if our friends should not need them. In the morning, I found

myself seated at the breakfast-table next to General Wool. It did not

surprise me to find the General very far from expansive. With Fort

McHenry on his shoulders and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, and the

weight of a military department loading down his social safety-valves, I

thought it a great deal for an officer in his trying position to select

so very obliging and affable an aid as the gentleman who relieved him of

the burden of attending to strangers.

We left the Eutaw House, to take the cars for Frederick. As we stood

waiting on the platform, a telegraphic message was handed in silence to

my companion. Sad news: the lifeless body of the son he was hastening

to see was even now on its way to him in Baltimore. It was no time for

empty words of consolation: I knew what he had lost, and that now was

not the time to intrude upon a grief borne as men bear it, felt as women

feel it.

Colonel Wilder Dwight was first made known to me as the friend of a

beloved relative of my own, who was with him during a severe illness in

Switzerland, and for whom while living, and for whose memory when dead,

he retained the warmest affection. Since that, the story of his noble

deeds of daring, of his capture and escape, and a brief visit home

before he was able to rejoin his regiment, had made his name familiar to

many among us, myself among the number. His memory has been honored by

those who had the largest opportunity of knowing his rare promise, as a

man of talents and energy of nature. His abounding vitality must have

produced its impression on all who met him; there was a still fire about

him which any one could see would blaze up to melt all difficulties and

recast obstacles into implements in the mould of an heroic will. These

elements of his character many had the chance of knowing; but I shall

always associate him with the memory of that pure and noble friendship

which made me feel that I knew him before I looked upon his face, and

added a personal tenderness to the sense of loss which I share with the

whole community.

Here, then, I parted, sorrowfully, from the companions with whom I set

out on my journey.

In one of the cars, at the same station, we met General Shriver, of

Frederick, a most loyal Unionist, whose name is synonymous with a hearty

welcome to all whom he can aid by his counsel and his hospitality. He

took great pains to give us all the information we needed, and expressed

the hope, which was afterwards fulfilled, to the great gratification

of some of us, that we should meet again, when he should return to his

home.

There was nothing worthy of special note in the trip to Frederick,

except our passing a squad of Rebel prisoners, whom I missed seeing, as

they flashed by, but who were said to be a most forlorn-looking crowd of

scarecrows. Arrived at the Monocacy River, about three miles this side

of Frederick, we came to a halt, for the railroad-bridge had been blown

up by the Rebels, and its iron pillars and arches were lying in the bed

of the river. The unfortunate wretch who fired the train was killed by

the explosion, and lay buried hard by, his hands sticking out of the

shallow grave into which he had been huddled. This was the story they

told us, but whether true or no I must leave to the correspondents of

"Notes and Queries" to settle.

There was a great confusion of carriages and wagons at the

stopping-place of the train, so that it was a long time before I could

get anything that would carry us. At last I was lucky enough to light on

a sturdy wagon, drawn by a pair of serviceable bays, and driven by

James Grayden, with whom I was destined to have a somewhat continued

acquaintance. We took up a little girl who had been in Baltimore during

the late Rebel inroad. It made me think of the time when my own mother,

at that time six years old, was hurried off from Boston, then occupied

by the British soldiers, to Newburyport, and heard the people saying

that "the red-coats were coming, killing and murdering everybody as they

went along." Frederick looked cheerful for a place that had so recently

been in an enemy's hands. Here and there a house or shop was shut up,

but the national colors were waving in all directions, and the general

aspect was peaceful and contented. I saw no bullet-marks or other sign

of the fighting which had gone on in the streets. My lady-companion was

taken in charge by a daughter of that hospitable family to which we

had been commended by its head, and I proceeded to inquire for wounded

officers at the various temporary hospitals.

At the United States Hotel, where many were lying, I heard mention of an

officer in an upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieutenant Abbott,

of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, lying ill with what looked

like typhoid fever. While there, who should come in but the ubiquitous

Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, often confounded with his

namesake who visited the Flying Island, and with some reason, for he

must have a pair of wings under his military upper garment, or he could

never be in so many places at once. He was going to Boston in charge of

the lamented Dr. Revere's body. From his lips I learned something of the

mishaps of the regiment. My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave

than at first thought; but he mentioned incidentally having heard

a story recently that he was _killed_,--a fiction, doubtless,--a

mistake,--a palpable absurdity,--not to be remembered or made any

account of. Oh, no! but what dull ache is this in that obscurely

sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the nervous centre

called the _semilunar ganglion_ lies unconscious of itself until a great

grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the non-conductors

which isolate it from ordinary impressions? I talked awhile with

Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but soldier-like and

uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent lady, a

captain's wife, New-England-born, loyal as the Liberty on a golden

ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that

goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick through the Rebel

inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it would be safe, to

unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the

town.

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small

chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,

I know he will forgive me, if I confess that I could not help smiling

in the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man,

he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his

acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.

He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him

querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a

thin voice with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can

command. He was starving,--he could not get what he wanted to eat. He

was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial

containing three thimblefuls of brandy,--his whole stock of that

encouraging article. Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and

afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants. Feed this poor

gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him,

nor he himself. We are all egotists in sickness and debility. An animal

has been defined as "a stomach ministered to by organs"; and the

greatest man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of

fever and starvation.

James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a

bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey

as far as Middletown. As we were about starting from the front of the

United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed

a wish to be allowed to share our conveyance. I looked at them and

convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor

deserters, nor camp-followers, nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on

a proper errand. The first of them I will pass over briefly. He was

a young man, of mild and modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania

regiment, which he was going to rejoin. He belonged to the Moravian

Church, of which I had the misfortune to know little more than what I

had learned from Southey's "Life of Wesley," and from the exquisite

hymns we have borrowed from its rhapsodists. The other stranger was a

New-Englander of respectable appearance, with a grave, hard, honest,

hay-bearded face, who had come to serve the sick and wounded on the

battle-field and in its immediate neighborhood. There is no reason why I

should not mention his name, but I shall content myself with calling him

the Philanthropist.

So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James

Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up

through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist,

and myself, the teller of this story.

And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail

from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and

wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot--multitudes with slight

wounds of the upper limbs, the head or face--were told to take up their

beds--a light burden, or none at all--and walk. Just as the battle-field

sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive

everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal

forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a week there

had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the streets of

Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last

the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the

long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes which tear their

path through our fields and villages. The slain of higher condition,

"embalmed" and iron-cased, were sliding off on the railways to their

far homes; the dead of the rank-and-file were being gathered up and

committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for

hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the

neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I

have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly

pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that

many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings

more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The

companionship of so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their

suffering; it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring

it home as one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound. Then

they were all of the male sex, and in the freshness or the prime of

their strength. Though they tramped so wearily along, yet there was rest

and kind nursing in store for them. These wounds they bore would be the

medals they would show their children and grandchildren by-and-by. Who

would not rather wear his decorations beneath his uniform than on it?

Yet among them were figures which arrested our attention and sympathy.

Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or

pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary

limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of

strength. At the road-side sat or lay others, quite spent with their

journey. Here and there was a house at which the wayfarers would stop,

in the hope, I fear often vain, of getting refreshment; and in one place

was a clear, cool spring, where the little bands of the long procession

halted for a few moments, as the trains that traverse the desert rest by

its fountains. My companions had brought a few peaches along with them,

which the Philanthropist bestowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers

with a satisfaction which we all shared. I had with me a small flask of

strong waters, to be used as a medicine in case of inward grief. From

this, also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to a poor fellow

who looked as if he needed it. I rather admired the simplicity with

which he applied my limited means of solace to the first-comer who

wanted it more than I; a genuine benevolent impulse does not stand on

ceremony, and had I perished of colic for want of a stimulus that night,

I should not have reproached my friend the Philanthropist any more than

I grudged my other ardent friend the two dollars and more which it cost

me to send the charitable message he left in my hands.

It was a lovely country through which we were riding. The hill-sides

rolled away into the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the sun,

as one sees them in the open parts of the Berkshire valley, at

Lanesborough, for instance, or in the many-hued mountain-chalice at the

bottom of which the Shaker houses of Lebanon have shaped themselves like

a sediment of cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land

ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian-corn standing, but I saw no

pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many

turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little

miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of

our cornfields. The rail-fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders

of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied.

The houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the

garden-fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely

of trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very

generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious

and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar

to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental

President, was frequently met with. The women were still more

distinguishable from our New-England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,

delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,

dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a

land of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of

muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of

the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner

soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and if

there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all

retracted.

At intervals, a dead horse lay by the road-side, or in the fields,

unburied, not grateful to gods or men, I saw no bird of prey, no

ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place

where it was held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the "twa

corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but

no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the

banquet pierced through the heavy-laden and sickening air.

Full in the middle of the road, caring little for whom or what they met,

came long strings of army-wagons, returning empty from the front after

supplies. James Grayden stated it as his conviction that they had a

little rather run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks of these

equipages and their drivers; they meant business. Drawn by mules mostly,

six, I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, wagon, beast, and

driver, they came jogging along the road, turning neither to right nor

left,--some driven by bearded, solemn white men, some by careless,

saucy-looking negroes, of a blackness like that of anthracite or

obsidian. There seemed to be nothing about them, dead or alive, that was

not serviceable. Sometimes a mule would give out on the road; then he

was left where he lay, until by-and-by he would think better of it, and

get up, when the first public wagon that came along would hitch him on,

and restore him to the sphere of duty.

It was evening when we got to Middletown. The gentle lady--who had

graced our homely conveyance with her company here left us. She found

her husband, the gallant Colonel, in very comfortable quarters, well

cared for, very weak from the effects of the fearful operation he had

been compelled to undergo, but showing the same calm courage to endure

as he had shown manly energy to act. It was a meeting full of heroism

and tenderness, of which I heard more than there is need to tell. Health

to the brave soldier, and peace to the household over which go fair a

spirit presides!