"And if you pass over her elbows, there are her feet," continued Christine languidly. For she was a sybaritic lover of the fine linens of life, that friend of mine—a pre-Raphaelite lady with clinging draperies and a mediaeval clasp on her belt. Her whole being rebelled against ugliness, and the mere sight of a sharp-nosed, light-eyed woman on a cold day made her uncomfortable for hours.

"Have we not feet, too?" I replied sharply.

But I knew what she meant. Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye now-a-days, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient Greeks; and Felipa's little brown insteps were half the time torn or bruised by the thorns of the chapparal. Besides, there was always the disagreeable idea that she might step upon something cold and squirming when she prowled through the thickets knee-deep in the matted grasses. Snakes abounded, although we never saw them; but Felipa went up to their very doors, as it were, and rang the bell defiantly.

One day old Grandfather Bartolo took the child with him down to the coast: she was always wild to go to the beach, where she could gather shells and sea-beans, and chase the little ocean-birds that ran along close to the waves with that swift gliding motion of theirs, and where she could listen to the roar of the breakers. We were several miles up the river, and to go down to the ocean was quite a voyage to Felipa. She bade us good-bye joyously; then ran back to hug Christine a second time, then to the boat again; then back.

"I thought you wanted to go, child?" I said, a little impatiently, for I was reading aloud, and these small irruptions were disturbing.

"Yes," said Felipa, "I want to go; and still—Perhaps if the gracious senora would kiss me again—"

Christine only patted her cheek and told her to run away: she obeyed, but there was a wistful look in her eyes, and even after the boat had started her face, watching us from the stern, haunted me.

"Now that the little monkey has gone, I may be able at last to catch and fix a likeness of her," I said: "in this case a recollection is better than the changing quicksilver reality."

"You take it as a study of ugliness, I suppose?"

"Do not be so hard upon the child, Christine."

"Hard? Why, she adores me," said my friend, going off to her hammock under the tree.

Several days passed, and the boat returned not. I accomplished a fine amount of work, and Christine a fine amount of swinging in the hammock and dreaming. At length one afternoon I gave my final touch, and carried my sketch over to the pre-Raphaelite lady for criticism. "What do you see?" I said.

"I see a wild-looking child with yellow eyes, a mat of curly black hair, a lank little bodice, her two thin brown arms embracing a gaunt old dog with crooked legs, big feet and turned-in toes."

"Is that all?"

"All."

"You do not see latent beauty, proud courage, and a possible great gulf of love in that poor wild little face?"

"Nothing of the kind," replied Christine decidedly. "I see an ugly little girl: that is all."

The next day the boat returned, and brought back five persons—the old grandfather, Felipa, Drollo, Miguel of the island and—Edward Bowne.

"Already?" I said.

"Tired of the Madre, Kitty: thought I would come up here and see you for a while. I knew you must be pining for me."

"Certainly," I replied: "do you not see how I have wasted away?"

He drew my arm through his and raced me down the plank-walk toward the shore, where I arrived laughing and out of breath.

"Where is Christine?" he asked.

I came back into the traces at once: "Over there in the hammock. You wish to go to the house first, I suppose?"

"Of course not."

"But she did not come to meet you, Edward, although she knew you had landed."

"Of course not, also."

"I do not understand you two."

"And of course not, a third time," said Edward, looking down at me with a smile. "What do quiet, peaceful little artists know about war?"

"Is it war?"

"Something very like it, Kitty. What is that you are carrying?"

"Oh! my new sketch. What do you think of it?"

"Good, very good. Some little girl about here, I suppose?"

"Why, it is Felipa!"

"And who is Felipa? Seems to me I have seen that old dog, though."

"Of course you have: he was in the boat with you, and so was Felipa, but she was dressed in boy's clothes, and that gives her a different look."

"Oh! that boy? I remember him. His name is Philip. He is a funny little fellow," said Edward calmly.

"Her name is Felipa, and she is not a boy or a funny little fellow at all," I replied.

"Isn't she? I thought she was both," replied Ned carelessly, and then he went off toward the hammock. I turned away after noting Christine's cool greeting, and went back to the boat.

Felipa came bounding to meet me. "What is his name?" she demanded.

"Bowne."

"Buon—Buona: I cannot say it."

"Bowne, child—Edward Bowne."

"Oh! Eduardo: I know that. Eduardo—Eduardo—a name of honey."

She flew off singing the name, followed by Drollo carrying his mistress's palmetto basket in his big patient mouth; but when I passed the house a few moments afterward she was singing, or rather talking volubly of, another name—"Miguel," and "the wife of Miguel," who were apparently important personages on the canvas of her life. As it happened, I never really saw that wife of Miguel, who seemingly had no name of her own; but I imagined her. She lived on a sandbar in the ocean not far from the mouth of our river; she drove pelicans like ducks with a long switch, and she had a tame eagle; she had an old horse also, who dragged the driftwood across the sand on a sledge, and this old horse seemed like a giant horse always, outlined as he ever was against the flat bar and the sky. She went out at dawn, and she went out at sunset, but during the middle of the burning day she sat at home and polished sea-beans, for which she obtained untold sums: she was very tall, she was very yellow, and she had but one eye. These items, one by one, had been dropped by Felipa at various times, and it was with curiosity that I gazed upon the original Miguel, the possessor of this remarkable spouse. He was a grave-eyed, yellow man, who said little and thought less, applying cui bono? to mental much as the city man applies it to bodily exertion, and therefore achieving, I think, a finer degree of inanition. The tame eagle, the pelicans, were nothing to him, and when I saw his lethargic, gentle countenance my own curiosity about them seemed to die away in haze, as though I had breathed in an invisible opiate. He came, he went, and that was all: exit Miguel.

Felipa was constantly with us now. She and Drollo followed the three of us wherever we went—followed the two also whenever I stayed behind to sketch, as I often stayed, for in those days I was trying to catch the secret of the barrens: a hopeless effort, I know it now. "Stay with me, Felipa," I said; for it was natural to suppose that the lovers might like to be alone. (I call them lovers for want of a better name, but they were more like haters: however, in such cases it is nearly the same thing.) And then Christine, hearing this, would immediately call "Felipa!" and the child would dart after them, happy as a bird. She wore her boy's suit now all the time, because the senora had said she "looked well in it." What the senora really said was, that in boy's clothes she looked less like a grasshopper. But this had been translated as above by Edward Bowne when Felipa suddenly descended upon him one day and demanded to be instantly told what the gracious lady was saying about her; for she seemed to know by intuition when we spoke of her, although we talked in English and mentioned no names. When told, her small face beamed, and she kissed Christine's hand joyfully and bounded away. Christine took out her beautiful handkerchief and wiped the spot.

"Christine," I said, "do you remember the fate of the proud girl who walked upon bread?"

"You think that I may starve for kisses some time?" said my friend, going on with the wiping.

"Not while I am alive," called out Edward from behind. His style of courtship was of the sledge-hammer sort sometimes. But he did not get much for it on that day; only lofty tolerance, which seemed to amuse him greatly.

Edward played with Felipa very much as if she was a rubber toy or a trapeze performer. He held her out at arm's length in mid-air, he poised her on his shoulder, he tossed her up into the low myrtle trees, and dangled her by her little belt over the claret-colored pools on the barren; but he could not frighten her: she only laughed and grew wilder and wilder, like a squirrel. "She has muscles and nerves of steel," he said admiringly.

"Do put her down: she is too excitable for such games," I said in French, for Felipa seemed to divine our English now. "See the color she has."

For there was a trail of dark red over the child's thin oval cheeks which made her look strangely unlike herself. As she caught our eyes fixed upon her she suddenly stopped her climbing and came and sat at Christine's feet. "Some day I shall wear robes like the senora's," she said, passing her hand over the soft fabric; "and I think," she added after some slow consideration, "that my face will be like the senora's too."

Edward burst out laughing. The little creature stopped abruptly and scanned his face.

"Do not tease her," I said.

Quick as a flash she veered around upon me. "He does not tease me," she said angrily in Spanish; "and, besides, what if he does? I like it." She looked at me with gleaming eyes and stamped her foot.

"What a little tempest!" said Christine.

Then Edward, man-like, began to explain. "You could not look much like this lady, Felipa," he said, "because you are so dark, you know."

"Am I dark?"

"Very dark; but many people are dark, of course; and for my part I always liked dark eyes," said this mendacious person.

"Do you like my eyes?" asked Felipa anxiously.

"Indeed I do: they are like the eyes of a dear little calf I once owned when I was a boy."

The child was satisfied, and went back to her place beside Christine. "Yes, I shall wear robes like this," she said dreamily, drawing the flowing drapery over her knees clad in the little linen trousers, and scanning the effect: "they would trail behind me—so." Her bare feet peeped out below the hem, and again we all laughed, the little brown toes looked so comical coming out from the silk and the snowy embroideries. She came down to reality at once, looked at us, looked at herself, and for the first time seemed to comprehend the difference. Then suddenly she threw herself down on the ground like a little animal, and buried her head in her arms. She would not speak, she would not look up: she only relaxed one arm a little to take in Drollo, and then lay motionless. Drollo looked at us out of one eye solemnly from his uncomfortable position, as much as to say, "No use: leave her to me." So after a while we went away and left them there.

That evening I heard a low knock at my door. "Come in," I said, and Felipa entered. I hardly knew her. She was dressed in a flowered muslin gown which had probably belonged to her mother, and she wore her grandmother's stockings and large baggy slippers: on her mat of curly hair was perched a high-crowned, stiff white cap adorned with a ribbon streamer, and her lank little neck, coming out of the big gown, was decked with a chain of large sea-beans, like exaggerated lockets. She carried a Cuban fan in her hand which was as large as a parasol, and Drollo, walking behind, fairly clanked with the chain of sea-shells which she had wound around him from head to tail. The droll tableau and the supreme pride on Felipa's countenance overcame me, and I laughed aloud. A sudden cloud of rage and disappointment came over the poor child's face: she threw her cap on the floor and stamped on it; she tore off her necklace and writhed herself out of her big flowered gown, and running to Drollo, nearly strangled him in her fierce efforts to drag off his shell chains. Then, a half-dressed, wild little phantom, she seized me by the skirts and dragged me toward the looking-glass. "You are not pretty either," she cried. "Look at yourself! look at yourself!"

"I did not mean to laugh at you, Felipa," I said gently: "I would not laugh at any one; and it is true I am not pretty, as you say. I can never be pretty, child; but if you will try to be more gentle, I could teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again. I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice: you could help, and that would teach you to sew. But a little girl who wants all this done for her must be quiet and good."

"I am good," said Felipa—"as good as everything."

The tears still stood in her eyes, but her anger was forgotten: she improvised a sort of dance around my room, followed by Drollo dragging his twisted chain, stepping on it with his big feet, and finally winding himself up into a knot around the chair-legs.

"Couldn't we make Drollo something too? dear old Drollo!" said Felipa, going to him and squeezing him in an enthusiastic embrace. I used to wonder how his poor ribs stood it: Felipa used him as a safety-valve for her impetuous feelings.

She kissed me good-night and then asked for "the other lady."

"Go to bed, child," I said: "I will give her your good-night."

"But I want to kiss her too," said Felipa.

She lingered at the door and would not go; she played with the latch, and made me nervous with its clicking; at last I ordered her out. But on opening my door half an hour afterward there she was sitting on the floor outside in the darkness, she and Drollo, patiently waiting. Annoyed, but unable to reprove her, I wrapped the child in my shawl and carried her out into the moonlight, where Christine and Edward were strolling to and fro under the pines. "She will not go to bed, Christine, without kissing you," I explained.

"Funny little monkey!" said my lily friend, passively allowing the embrace.

"Me too," said Edward, bending down. Then I carried my bundle back satisfied.

The next day Felipa and I in secret began our labors: hers consisted in worrying me out of my life and spoiling material—mine in keeping my temper and trying to sew. The result, however, was satisfactory, never mind how we got there. I led Christine out one afternoon: Edward followed. "Do you like tableaux?" I said. "There is one I have arranged for you."

Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving as a background. She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors, and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring out the latent character of her face. Brown moccasins, red stockings and a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.

"By Jove!" cried Edward, "the little thing is almost pretty."

Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face: forgetting her pose, she bounded forward to Christine's side. "I am pretty, then?" she said with exultation: "I am pretty, then, after all? For now you yourself have said it—have said it."

"No, Felipa," I interposed, "the gentleman said it." For the child had a curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as now. But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she was allowed to sit at Christine's feet and look up into her fair face unmolested. I was forgotten, as usual.

"It is always so," I said to myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman. I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and forgot the world. Our world down there on the edge of the salt marsh, however, was a small one: when two persons went out of it there was a vacuum at once.

One morning Felipa came sadly to my side. "They have gone away,'" she said.

"Yes, child."

"Down to the beach to spend all the day."

"Yes, I know it."

"And without me!"

This was the climax. I looked up. The child's eyes were dry, but there was a hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old: it was as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would be half a century on.

"Why did they not take me?" she said. "I am pretty now: she herself said it."

"They cannot always take you, Felipa," I replied, giving up the point as to who had said it.

"Why not? I am pretty now: she herself said it," persisted the child. "In these clothes, you know: she herself said it. The clothes of the son of Pedro you will never see more: they are burned."

"Burned?"

"Yes, burned," replied Felipa composedly. "I carried them out on the barren and burned them. Drollo singed his paw. They burned quite nicely. But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me! What shall I do?"

"Take these colors and make me a picture," I suggested. Generally, this was a prized privilege, but to-day it did not attract: she turned away, and a few moments after I saw her going down to the end of the plank walk, where she stood gazing wistfully toward the ocean. There she stayed all day, going into camp with Drollo, and refusing to come to dinner in spite of old Dominga's calls and beckonings. At last the patient old grandmother went down herself to the end of the long plank walk where they were with some bread and venison on a plate. Felipa ate but little, but Drollo, after waiting politely until she had finished, devoured everything that was left in his calmly hungry way, and then sat back on his haunches with one paw on the plate, as though for the sake of memory. Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind: it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails. Felipa sprang up joyfully: I thought she would spring into the boat in her eagerness. What did she receive for her long vigil? A short word or two: that was all. Christine and Edward had quarreled.

How do lovers quarrel ordinarily? But I should not ask that, for these were no ordinary lovers: they were decidedly extraordinary.

"You should not submit to her caprices so readily," I said the next day while strolling on the barren with Edward. (He was not so much cast down, however, as he might have been.)

"I adore the very ground her foot touches, Kitty."

"I know it. But how will it end?"

"I will tell you: some of these days I shall win her, and then—she will adore me."

Here Felipa came running after us, and Edward immediately challenged her to a race: a game of romps began. If Christine had been looking from her window, she might have thought he was not especially disconsolate over her absence; but she was not looking. She was never looking out of anything or for anybody. She was always serenely content where she was. Edward and Felipa strayed off among the pine trees, and gradually I lost sight of them. But as I sat sketching an hour afterward Edward came into view, carrying the child in his arms. I hurried to meet them.

"I shall never forgive myself," he said: "the little thing has fallen and injured her foot badly, I fear."

"I do not care at all," said Felipa: "I like to have it hurt. It is my foot, isn't it?"

These remarks she threw at me defiantly, as though I had laid claim to the member in question. I could not help laughing.

"The other lady will not laugh," said the child proudly. And in truth Christine, most unexpectedly, took up the role of nurse. She carried Felipa to her own room—for we each had a little cell opening out of the main apartment—and as white-robed Charity she shone with new radiance. "Shone" is the proper word, for through the open door of the dim cell, with the dark little face of Felipa on her shoulder, her white robe and skin seemed fairly to shine, as white lilies shine on a dark night. The old grandmother left the child in our care and watched our proceedings wistfully, very much as a dog watches the human hands that extract the thorn from the swollen foot of her puppy. She was grateful and asked no questions; in fact, thought was not one of her mental processes. She did not think much: she only felt. As for Felipa, the child lived in rapture during those days in spite of her suffering. She scarcely slept at all—she was too happy: I heard her voice rippling on through the night, and Christine's low replies. She adored her beautiful nurse.

The fourth day came: Edward Bowne walked into the cell. "Go out and breathe the fresh air for an hour or two," he said in the tone more of a command than a request.

"But the child will never consent," replied Christine sweetly.

"Oh yes, she will: I will stay with her," said the young man, lifting the feverish little head on his arm and passing his hand softly over the bright eyes.

"Felipa, do you not want me?" said Christine, bending down.

"He stays: it is all the same," murmured the child.

"So it is. Go, Christine," said Edward with a little smile of triumph.

Without a word Christine left the cell. But she did not go to walk: she came to my room, and throwing herself on my bed fell in a moment into a deep sleep, the reaction after her three nights of wakefulness. When she awoke it was long after dark, and I had relieved Edward in his watch.

"You will have to give it up," he said as our lily came forth at last with sleep-flushed cheeks and starry eyes shielded from the light. "The spell is broken: we have all been taking care of Felipa, and she likes one as well as the other."

Which was not true, in my case at least, since Felipa had openly derided my small strength when I lifted her, and beat off the sponge with which I attempted to bathe her hot face. "They" used no sponges, she said, only their nice cool hands; and she wished "they" would come and take care of her again. But Christine had resigned in toto. If Felipa did not prefer her to all others, then Felipa could not have her: she was not a common nurse. And indeed she was not. Her fair beauty, ideal grace, cooing voice and the strength of her long arms and flexible hands were like magic to the sick, and—distraction to the well; the well in this case being Edward Bowne looking in at the door.

"You love them very much, do you not, Felipa?" I said one day when the child was sitting up for the first time in a cushioned chair.

"Ah, yes: it is so delicious when they carry me," she replied. But it was Edward who carried her.

"He is very strong," I said.

"Yes, and their long soft hair, with the smell of roses in it too," said Felipa dreamily. But the hair was Christine's.

"I shall love them for ever, and they will love me for ever," continued the child. "Drollo too." She patted the dog's head as she spoke, and then concluded to kiss him on his little inch of forehead: next she offered him all her medicines and lotions in turn, and he smelled at them grimly. "He likes to know what I am taking," she explained.

I went on: "You love them, Felipa, and they are fond of you. They will always remember you, no doubt."

"Remember!" cried Felipa, starting up from her cushions like a Jack-in-the-box. "They are not going away? Never! never!"

"But of course they must go some time, for—"

But Felipa was gone. Before I could divine her intent she had flung herself out of her chair down on to the floor, and was crawling on her hands and knees toward the outer room. I ran after her, but she reached the door before me, and, dragging her bandaged foot behind her, drew herself, toward Christine. "You are not going away! You are not! you are not!" she sobbed, clinging to her skirts.

Christine was reading tranquilly: Edward stood at the outer door mending his fishing-tackle. The coolness between them remained unwarmed by so much as a breath. "Run away, child: you disturb me," said Christine, turning over a leaf. She did not even look at the pathetic little bundle at her feet. Pathetic little bundles must be taught some time what ingratitude deserves.

"How can she run, lame as she is?" said Edward from the doorway.

"You are not going away, are you? Tell me you are not," sobbed Felipa in a passion of tears, beating on the floor with one hand, and with the other clinging to Christine.

"I am not going," said Edward. "Do not sob so, you poor little thing!"

She crawled to him, and he took her up in his arms and soothed her into stillness again: then he carried her out on to the barren for a breath of fresh air.

"It is a most extraordinary thing how that child confounds you two," I said. "It is a case of color-blindness, as it were—supposing you two were colors."

"Which we are not," replied Christine carelessly. "Do not stray off into mysticism, Catherine."

"It is not mysticism: it is a study of character—"

"Where there is no character," replied my friend.

I gave it up, but I said to myself, "Fate, in the next world make me one of those long, lithe, light-haired women, will you? I want to see how it feels."

Felipa's foot was well again, and spring had come. Soon we must leave our lodge on the edge of the pine barren, our outlook over the salt marsh, our river sweeping up twice a day, bringing in the briny odors of the ocean: soon we should see no more the eagles far above us or hear the night-cry of the great owls, and we must go without the little fairy flowers of the barren, so small that a hundred of them scarcely made a tangible bouquet, yet what beauty! what sweetness! In my portfolio were sketches and studies of the barrens, and in my heart were hopes. Somebody says somewhere, "Hope is more than a blessing: it is a duty and a virtue." But I fail to appreciate preserved hope—hope put up in cans and served out in seasons of depression. I like it fresh from the tree. And so when I hope it is hope, and not that well-dried, monotonous cheerfulness which makes one long to throw the persistent smilers out of the window. Felipa danced no more on the barrens; her illness had toned her excitable nature; she seemed content to sit at our feet while we talked, looking up dreamily into our faces, but no longer eagerly endeavoring to comprehend. We were there: that was enough.

"She is growing like a reed," I said: "her illness has left her weak."

"-Minded," suggested Christine, smiling.

At this moment Felipa stroked the lady's white hand tenderly and laid her brown cheek against it.

"Do you not feel reproached," I said.

"Why? Must we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour's happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?"

"The latter," remarked Edward, who had come up unobserved.

They gazed at each other unflinchingly. They had come to open battle during those last days, and I knew that the end was near. Their words had been cold as ice, cutting as steel, and I said to myself, "At any moment." There would be a deadly struggle, and then Christine would yield. Even I comprehended something of what that yielding would be. There are beautiful velvety panthers in the Asian forests, and in real life too, sometimes.

"Why do they hate each other so?" Felipa said to me sadly.

"Do they hate each other?"

"Yes, for I feel it here," she answered, touching her breast with a dramatic little gesture.

"Nonsense! Go and play with your doll, child." For I had made her a respectable, orderly doll to take the place of the ungainly fetich out on the barren.

Felipa gave me a look and walked away. A moment afterward she brought the doll out of the house before my very eyes, and, going down to the end of the dock, deliberately threw it into the water: the tide was flowing out, and away went my toy-woman out of sight, out to sea.

"Well!" I said to myself. "What next?"

I had not told Felipa we were going: I thought it best to let it take her by surprise. I had various small articles of finery ready as farewell gifts which should act as sponges to absorb her tears. But Fate took the whole matter out of my hands. This is how it happened. One evening in the jessamine arbor, in the fragrant darkness of the warm spring night, the end came: Christine was won. She glided in like a wraith, and I, divining at once what had happened, followed her into her little room, where I found her lying on her bed, her hands clasped on her breast, her eyes open and veiled in soft shadows, her white robe drenched with dew. I kissed her fondly—I never could help loving her then or now—and next I went out to find Edward. He had been kind to me all my poor gray life: should I not go to him now? He was still in the arbor, and I sat down by his side quietly: I knew that the words would come in time. They came: what a flood! English was not enough for him. He poured forth his love in the rich-voweled Spanish tongue also: it has sounded doubly sweet to me ever since.

"Have you felt the wool of the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt the bud o' the brier? Or the nard in the fire? Or ha' tasted the bag o' the bee? Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet is she!"

said the young lover again and again; and I, listening there in the dark fragrant night, with the dew heavy upon me, felt glad that the old simple-hearted love was not entirely gone from our tired metallic world.

It was late when we returned to the house. After reaching my room I found that I had left my cloak in the arbor. It was a strong fabric: the dew could not hurt it, but it could hurt my sketching materials and various trifles in the wide inside pockets—objets de luxe to me, souvenirs of happy times, little artistic properties that I hang on the walls of my poor studio when in the city. I went softly out into the darkness again and sought the arbor: groping on the ground I found, not the cloak, but—Felipa! She was crouched under the foliage, face downward: she would not move or answer.

"What is the matter, child?" I said, but she would not speak. I tried to draw her from her lair, but she tangled herself stubbornly still farther among the thorny vines, and I could not move her. I touched her neck: it was cold. Frightened, I ran back to the house for a candle.

"Go away," she said in a low hoarse voice when I flashed the light over her. "I know all, and I am going to die. I have eaten the poison things in your box, and just now a snake came on my neck and I let him. He has bitten me, I suppose, and I am glad. Go away: I am going to die."

I looked around: there was my color-case rifled and empty, and the other articles were scattered on the ground. "Good Heavens, child!" I cried, "what have you eaten?"

"Enough," replied Felipa gloomily. "I knew they were poisons: you told me so. And I let the snake stay."

By this time the household, aroused by my hurried exit with the candle, came toward the arbor. The moment Edward appeared Felipa rolled herself up like a hedgehog again and refused to speak. But the old grandmother knelt down and drew the little crouching figure into her arms with gentle tenderness, smoothing its hair and murmuring loving words in her soft dialect.

"What is it?" said Edward; but even then his eyes were devouring Christine, who stood in the dark, vine-wreathed doorway like a picture in a frame. I explained.

Christine smiled softly. "Jealousy," she said in a low voice. "I am not surprised." And of her own accord she gave back to Edward one of his looks.

But at the first sound of her voice Felipa had started up: she too saw the look, and wrenching herself free from old Dominga's arms, she threw herself at Christine's feet. "Look at me so," she cried—"me too: do not look at him. He has forgotten poor Felipa: he does not love her any more. But you do not forget, senora: you love me—you love me. Say you do or I shall die!"

We were all shocked by the pallor and the wild hungry look of her uplifted face. Edward bent down and tried to lift her in his arms, but when she saw him a sudden fierceness came into her eyes: they shot out yellow light and seemed to narrow to a point of flame. Before we knew it she had turned, seized something and plunged it into his encircling arm. It was my little Venetian dagger.

We sprang forward; our dresses were spotted with the fast-flowing blood; but Edward did not relax his hold on the writhing wild little body he held until it lay exhausted in his arms. "I am glad I did it," said the child, looking up into his face with her inflexible eyes. "Put me down—put me down, I say, by the gracious senora, that I may die with the trailing of her white robe over me." And the old grandmother with trembling hands received her and laid her down mutely at Christine's feet.

* * * * *

Ah, well! Felipa did not die. The poisons wracked but did not kill her, and the snake must have spared the little thin brown neck so despairingly offered to him. We went away: there was nothing for us to do but to go away as quickly as possible and leave her to her kind. To the silent old grandfather I said, "It will pass: she is but a child."

"She is nearly twelve, senora. Her mother was married at thirteen."

"But she loved them both alike, Bartolo. It is nothing: she does not know."

"You are right, lady: she does not know," replied the old man slowly; "but I know. It was two loves, and the stronger thrust the knife."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.



AT CHICKAMAUGA.

It was the cream of army life in Southern Tennessee that we left to go to Chickamauga. Our brigade had been detached, and lay for some days at the foot of Waldron's Ridge, which runs parallel to the broad Tennessee River, and a few miles north of Chattanooga, then the objective point of the campaign of the Army of the Cumberland under Rosecrans. Of course we knew that when the movements in progress in the country below were sufficiently advanced there would probably be lively work in effecting a passage of the river in the face of the formidable force which was guarding the ford two or three miles in our front. In fact, for some days we had been preparing for the effort, and up in a sluggish bayou the best of our mechanics were industriously at work fashioning a rude scow out of such material as axes could get from the native forests. In this craft, if it could be made to float, a select party was to cross the river some foggy morning, while the enemy were intently watching the ford below, and then, while the chosen few were being gloriously shot on the other side, the rest of us were to attempt the waist-deep, crooked ford.

For the time we were, however, as has been said, enjoying the cream of army life. The nights were chilly, though the days were hot and the clay roads dusty. The mornings were glorious with their bracing fresh air, their blue mists clinging about far-off Lookout Mountain, and even hiding the top of Waldron's Ridge at our backs, and their bright sunshine, which came flooding over the distant heights of Georgia and North Carolina. The wagon-tracks winding among the low, mound-like hills which filled the valley from the base of the ridge to the river were as smooth and gravelly as a well-kept private roadway, and an ambulance-ride along their tortuous courses was a most enjoyable recreation in those fine September days of 1863. A gallop twenty miles up the valley to where Minty kept watch and ward upon our flank with his trusty horsemen; a dinner at that hospitable mess-table, furnished maybe with a pig which had strayed from its home not wholly through natural perversity; and then a lively ride back in the early evening,—this, indeed, was pleasure.

The charm of campaigning is its rapidly-succeeding surprises. The general of the army may be proceeding regularly in the path he marked out months before. The corps commanders, and even the chiefs of division, may sometimes be able to foresee the movements from day to day. But to their subordinates everything is a surprise: they lie down at night in delightful uncertainty as to where the next sunset will find them, and they sit down to a breakfast of hard bread and bacon, relieved by a little foraging from the country, not sure that their coffee will cool before the bugle sounds a signal to pack and be off, to Heaven knows where. We found this charm of surprise, as we had hundreds of times before in other places, at our camp in the valley of the Tennessee. The alternating quick and droning notes of "the general" made us spring up from the mess-table one morning, and in a moment the lazy encampment was all hurry and bustle. An aide leaped upon his horse at head-quarters and dashed off on the road to the river, and we saw that the servants of General Hazen, our brigade commander, were stripping his baggage of the small impedimenta which accumulate so rapidly even in a few days of rest, but are abandoned when the army starts on an active campaign. It was not to be a mere change of camp, evidently, but a final adieu to the locality and a dash over the Tennessee—if we could make it.

While some of us were yet sipping our hot coffee, saved out of the general wreck in packing up, the bugles called "the assembly," and in ten minutes the brigade was stretching out at a lively rate on the road the aide had taken. At the river was the detail of mechanics who had been at work on the scow in the bayou. Their task had been suddenly abandoned. It was useless: the enemy had left the opposite bank and fallen back from Chattanooga. The crossing was made, and the brigade struck out into the country toward Ringgold and the Georgia line. We belonged to Palmer's division of Crittenden's corps, but we had no idea where our comrades were. Passing over the uninviting country, and by the cornfields wasted by Bragg's men that we might not gather the grain, the brigade fell in with the rest of its division near a lonely grist-mill at a junction of cross-roads, where a battalion of Southern cavalry had just galloped in upon an infantry regiment lying under its stacked arms by the wayside. So the enemy was not entirely out of the country, it appeared. Still, we saw nothing of him, save in a trifling skirmish the next day on the road from Ringgold to Gordon's Mills. Near this place, however, we fell in with General Thomas J. Wood, who had had a little encounter which convinced him that Bragg's infantry was in force near by. The gallant old soldier was in something of a passion because the theories of his superiors did not coincide with his demonstrations, and of course the demonstrations had to give way in that case.

Passing Gordon's Mills, our division stretched away on the road toward La Fayette, and after a day's march bivouacked in a wilderness of wood and on a sluggish stream different enough from the sparkling waters which came down by the old camp below Waldron's Ridge. McCook's corps, they said, having crossed the Tennessee below Chattanooga and advanced southward on the western side of the Lookout range, was to come through a gap opposite our present position and join us. Then the army, being together once more, and having gained Chattanooga by McCook's flank movement, would return to that point. To get Chattanooga was the object of the campaign, and the movements since we crossed the river were simply to assure the safe reunion of the several corps.

The idle days wore on until the afternoon of the 18th of September. Then "the general" was suddenly sounded from brigade head-quarters, the regimental buglers took up the signal, and in twenty minutes we were on the road and moving back toward Gordon's Mills and Chattanooga. No leisurely march this time, however, but a race which tasked even the legs of the veterans. Two hours of this brought the command to the crest of a ridge from which, away to the right, a wide expanse of country lay in view. There was a broad valley running parallel to the road we were traveling and covered by a dense growth of low oaks, which effectually hid roads, streams, and even the few lonely habitations of the people. But, looking from our eminence over the unbroken expanse of tree-tops, we could see a light yellow snake-like line stretching down the valley. It was dust from the road on which Bragg's army was hurrying toward the Rossville Pass, through which was the way to Chattanooga and all our communications and supplies. The line of dust extended miles down the valley, far in advance of the point we had reached. The rest of our army might be ahead of us and ahead of Bragg, or it might be on our left, or even behind us, for aught we knew, but it was plain enough why we were making such haste back toward Chattanooga.

The afternoon passed: darkness came, and still the march continued. Late in the evening we came upon a group of tents by the roadside—Rosecrans's head-quarters, with Rosecrans himself, and not in the best of humors, as some of us discovered on riding up to see friends on his staff. In his petulance and excitability the commanding general forgot to be gentlemanly, some of them said; and they left him not at all relieved of any doubts they had concerning our sudden and forced march.

It was long after midnight when we reached Gordon's Mills. Here the road was full of ambulances, wagons, artillery and infantry, while in the thickets on the left were heard the confused noises of the bivouac. There were no fires, which showed that we were supposed to be in the immediate presence of the enemy, and that our commander did not want his position revealed by camp-fires. At some distance past the mills Palmer's division was halted in the road, and the troops were massed by regiments, and moved some yards into the thicket to pass the few hours before daylight.

In the morning it was said that Bragg had indeed beaten in the race the day before, and had halted at night, if he halted at all, much nearer to the Rossville Pass than we were. The Chickamauga River was supposed to be between the two armies, but it is a stream which is easily fordable in many places, and a mile or two below where we lay was a bridge over which Bragg could cross rapidly with his artillery and trains, and then strike our road to Rossville ahead of us. A division moved out early in the day and went off toward this bridge. Soon after there was lively musketry and some cannonading in that direction. Word came back that the enemy had crossed the river in force too heavy to be successfully encountered by our reconnoitering division. Another division followed in the path of the first, and there was more firing. Finally, General Palmer moved his division out upon the road, and along it for some distance toward Rossville, approaching the firing down by the bridge. Halting near the Widow Glenn's cottage, about which were a little cloud of cavalry and many officers, we saw that Rosecrans was there, directing the movements in person. Palmer got his orders quickly. He was to move down the road toward Rossville to an indicated point, then form his division en echelon by brigade from the left, and move off the road to the right and attack. When he struck the enemy's left flank he was to envelop and crush it. The formation en echelon was to facilitate this enveloping and crushing.

Moving off the road as ordered, the division passed through several hundred yards of forest, and came upon a wide open field of lower ground, through the centre of which ran, parallel to our front, a narrow belt of timber. The skirmishers passed through this belt and a few yards beyond, and were then driven back by an overpowering fire from the enemy's skirmishers. Our main line came up to the timber and passed through it to the farther side; and then the edge of the forest beyond, in front, on the right and on the left, was suddenly fringed with a line of flashing fire, above which rose a thin white smoke. The tremendous crash of musketry was measured by the deep thunder of artillery farther back, and soon columns of dense white smoke rising above the tree-tops indicated the positions of several swift-working batteries. A storm of bullets whizzed through the ranks of the attacking echelons, while shrieking shells filled the air with a horrid din, and, bursting overhead, sent their ragged fragments hurtling down in every direction. In an instant a hundred gaps were opened in the firm ranks as the men sank to the ground beneath the smiting lead and iron. In an instant the gaps were closed, and in another a hundred more were opened. Every yard of the advance was costing the assailants a full company of men—every rod at least half a regiment. They wavered, halted and fell back to the shelter of the narrow belt of timber. The attack had failed, the flank of the enemy had not been struck.

But the other divisions of the army? Sent in as ours had been, some one of them must surely strike the opposing flank, unless Bragg's whole army had crossed the river and was in position before Rosecrans moved. Palmer's division held its place, fired its sixty rounds of cartridges into the wood where the unseen foe was, and waited for the attack of the succeeding division which should strike Bragg's flank. But we waited in vain. When Rosecrans's last division was forming its echelons it was itself enveloped on its outer flank by the active foe. Rosecrans's line, as he formed it a division at a time, had been constantly outflanked.

The battle was a failure thus far. We could all see that, and some of us saw how nearly it became an irretrievable disaster. Hazen's brigade had been withdrawn to replenish its ammunition after the attack, and was lying along the Rossville road. The men were filling their cartridge-boxes, and the captains were counting their diminished ranks and noting who were dead and who but wounded. Out at the front the fight still went on, but in a desultory way. Suddenly there was an ominous sound in front of Van Cleve's division, which was in the main line next on the right of Palmer.

Hazen leaped upon his horse. "Now Van Cleve is in for it!" he exclaimed. "They're coming for him!"

Quickly getting the men under arms, Hazen moved his brigade behind Van Cleve to act as a support, and awaited the coming attack. It came like a whirlwind, and Van Cleve's lines were scattered like fallen leaves. On came the triumphant enemy in heavy masses, while Van Cleve's disordered horde swept back with it Hazen's supporting regiments. All but one. Colonel Aquila Wiley of the Forty-first Ohio Infantry, seeing the coming avalanche of fugitives, broke his line to the rear by companies and allowed the flying mass to pass through the intervals. Then instantly reforming his line, Wiley delivered a volley by battalion upon the advancing foe. The latter, his ranks loose, as usual in a headlong pursuit, was staggered and stopped in Wiley's front, but pressed forward on his right, and had got well to his rear in that direction before the guns of the Forty-first were reloaded. At a double-quick step Wiley changed front to the rear on his left company, and sent another volley among the swarming enemy on his right. Twice he repeated this manoeuvre, and, gaining ground to the rear with each change of front, kept back the enemy from front and flank until he could take his place in good order upon a new line on a ridge to the rear.

Meantime, Hazen was not idle. Seeing the inevitable result when Van Cleve's lines wavered, he dashed down the road to some unemployed batteries. These he got quickly into position to enfilade the enemy as he passed over Van Cleve's abandoned ground, and while Wiley with his Forty-first was striking in front and flank to clear himself of the surrounding foes, Hazen's batteries were pouring shells at short range into the well-ordered supporting troops which the enemy was hurrying forward to improve the success he had gained. Bragg had actually crossed the Rossville road and cut the Army of the Cumberland in two, with nothing in the gap but one regiment of three hundred men. But the enfilading artillery smote asunder the solid ranks which were to follow up the victory and left their advantage a barren triumph. Night fell and ended there the first day's battle.

The blessed night! better for the Army of the Cumberland then than thirty thousand fresh men. Under its sheltering mantle a thousand necessary things were done. We knew well enough that the struggle must be renewed in the morning, but we hoped that it would not be taken up on our side under such disadvantages as had been against us in the day just closed. So when, some time after dark, an order came to move down the road to the left, it was gladly obeyed. We were going into position, it was evident, though where and how none of us could tell in the darkness. The road and the woods on each side of it were full of troops, ambulances, ammunition and head-quarter wagons, artillery, and, lastly, stragglers hunting for their regiments. Now and then a wounded man, whose hurt did not prevent his walking, came along inquiring for the hospitals. There were not many of these, however, for the hospital service was pretty efficient, and the surgeons were located near the ground where the fighting had been.

Winding about through such surroundings for what seemed a long time, so slow was the movement and so frequent the halts to allow the staff-officer who was directing the march to verify the route, Palmer's division at length stacked arms on a slightly rising ground not many hundred yards in front of the Rossville road. There were troops to the left of us, and soon after we halted troops came up on our right. We knew by this that we were in the main line of battle as it was being formed for the next day's fight. There were sounds occasionally from the forest in front which told us that the enemy also was making his preparations for the morning, and there was moving of troops, wagons, artillery, stragglers and mounted officers in rear of us almost all night. Even our troops in line, tired as they were, were not quite still. The men lay upon the ground and talked of the events of the day. Company commanders were inquiring the fate of their missing men, and some of them were even counting up the guns lost by killed and wounded men, and wondering how they could account for them on their next ordnance returns. Waking and sleeping by turns, officers and men passed the chilly night as best they could until it was near the time when the first gray streaks of dawn should come. Then those who were sleeping were quietly aroused; the ranks were noiselessly formed; the stacks of arms were broken; the first sergeants passed along the fronts of their companies to verify the attendance; and then the men were allowed to sit down, guns in hand, to await the daybreak and be in instant readiness for an attack if the enemy should attempt an early surprise.

Daylight came, however, on the memorable 20th of September, and no attack had been made. The first thought, naturally, after apprehension of an early attack had gone, was to appease hunger and thirst. But there was little in the haversacks, and nothing in the canteens. Details of men were sent for water, and never returned. The enemy had possession of the springs we had used the day before, and our details walked unconsciously into his hands. There was not a drop of water on the whole field, and men and officers resigned themselves to the torments of thirst, a thousand times worse than the gnawings of hunger. But with daylight we could at least get some idea of our position. In front was a dense forest, in which nothing was to be seen except our own skirmishers a few yards in advance. Just behind us was an oblong open field, three hundred yards wide and thrice as long. On the other side of this field ran the Rossville road. Beyond our division, to the left, was Johnson's, and then Baird's division, the latter forming the extreme left of the army, and extending off into the woods beyond the lower end of the open field. To our right—though this we could not see, the line being in a dense forest—was the division of Reynolds; beyond him was Brannan, and then came Wood; and so on to the right of the army, in what further order we did not know. It was evident that the line had been hastily formed: the divisions had been placed just as they were picked up in the confusion of the night. No corps was together in the line, but it was made up of a division from one corps, then a division from another, and then one from a third corps, and so on. Thus it happened that the four divisions on the left of the line had with them no corps commander.

In the idle hour after daylight our brigade commander directed the construction of a barricade of rails and logs, a little more than knee-high, along the front of his command. Some of the troops on the left and the right followed the example. The supposition was that the game would be changed this day, and that we should stand for attack as the enemy had done the day before. There was no little satisfaction in thinking that Bragg's men would have a chance to walk up to a fire at least as murderous as we had faced when attacking them. If the haversacks were empty and the canteens had gone for water never to return, the cartridge-boxes were full, and each man had about him an extra package or two of cartridges.

The morning wore slowly away, and on our part of the line everything was remarkably quiet. There was some skirmishing toward the right between eight and nine o'clock, but evidently nothing serious. The barricade was finished, and there was nothing to do but to lie behind it and wish for water as the day grew warmer and thirst became more intense.—But what is that?

There was a sharp rattle of Springfield rifles from Baird's skirmishers, a third of a mile to our left and hidden from sight by the woods. In a moment came a crash of musketry which brought every man to his feet. Baird's skirmishers had been driven in, and his main line had hurled its thousands of bullets as the attacking enemy came into view. Instantly the answering fire was given, and then followed the continuous rattling roar of a fierce general engagement. Wounded men began to come out of the wood where Baird was as they made their way alone toward the hospitals or were carried off by the hospital corps. Suddenly, a hundred men with arms in their hands emerged from the woods into the open field behind Baird, straggling and without order. These were not wounded men. No: it was too plain that Baird's division was giving way. A moment more, and the lower end of the open field was filled with a dense mass of men as Baird's disordered lines poured forth out of the woods, which were swarming with the exultant enemy. Through and behind the retreating mass the mounted officers rode furiously, their swinging sabres flashing in the sun as they alternately commanded and exhorted their men to rally and breast the storm of lead which the enemy was hurling upon them. Then Johnson, whose division was next to Baird's, wheeled a regiment or two backward and opened fire on the enemy engaged with Baird. The troops of the latter were not running, but falling back, firing as they went. Suddenly, one of their colonels seized his regimental standard from the color-bearer and faced his horse toward the enemy, holding the flag high above his head. The men began to rally around this flag, and in a moment an imperfect line had been formed. The enemy's success was at an end. A moment more, and with a wild cheer Baird's men dashed forward and drove the enemy from their front.

Meanwhile, we were not idle spectators of all this. At the moment when Baird's men had been forced into the open field, and it seemed impossible to re-form them under the fire they were receiving, the skirmishers in front of Johnson's and Palmer's divisions broke out into a lively fire and came in at a run. Close behind them were the rapidly-advancing skirmishers of the enemy. As these came in sight of our position they took shelter behind trees and waited for their main force to come up. Soon the woods behind them were filled with the long, sweeping lines of Bragg's infantry, moving swiftly and steadily up to the attack. They reached their skirmishers, and as the latter fell in with the main body the whole broke into the peculiar shrill and fitful yell of the Southern soldiery, and rushed impetuously upon our line. From behind its barricade Hazen's brigade gave the yelling assailants two volleys, by front and rear rank, and then, as the enemy staggered under the regular blows, the command "Load and fire at will!" rang along the line. Out burst a swift storm of lead, before which the wasting ranks of the assailants first wavered, and then stopped to open a rapid but wild and diminishing fire against the barricade. For a moment or two their colors waved defiantly at their front as their officers rode among them in the vain endeavor to hold them to the hopeless effort; and then they turned and vanished into the deep recesses of the forest whence they came. Not as they came, however, but as a flying multitude of panic-stricken men, insensible to authority, conscious only of their defeat and their peril.

Ah! but this was quite different from yesterday's work, thought the men of Hazen's brigade. It is one thing to march up to an enemy waiting to receive you on his chosen ground, and another to lie quietly in position and let your enemy feel his way up until he is within fair range. This was the thought after the successful defence: before the fight it is a question whether it does not require greater steadiness of nerve to wait inactive for an attack than to rush forward in an onslaught. Officers and men in Palmer's division were in excellent spirits. They saw that their comrades on the right and the left had met with equally good fortune. Johnson's division on one side and Reynolds's on the other remained as steady as rocks.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and all had prospered with us thus far. The enemy was getting his share of bloody repulses, of which we had had more than enough the day before. The attacks upon our line had begun upon the left, and were traveling toward our right. The two armies were thus brought together gradually, something after the manner of scissor-blades when they are slowly closed. The four divisions on the left had already successfully withstood the shock, which it was to be supposed the enemy had made as heavy as possible at that point, since the left was the vital point of the whole line. Success there would give him the line of retreat to Chattanooga, with Rosecrans's entire army shut out. Besides, we knew that the line was stronger toward the right, where at least two divisions were in reserve. No one apprehended disaster, therefore, when a long and rapid roll of musketry far to the right told that the enemy was attacking there. "Brannan and Wood are attending to 'em now!" said General Palmer, standing in a group of officers in rear of Hazen's brigade. The talk went on as before—about the successful defences of the morning, the barricade, Baird's splendid recovery, etc. But soon everybody was listening anxiously to the sounds of the battle on the right. The roar of musketry had worked round until it was behind our right shoulders as we stood facing to our front. There could be no doubt about it: the line had given way somewhere on the right, and the enemy was following up. It was not long before stray bullets were singing behind and among us, flying in a direction parallel to our line. Then, all in a moment, a battery far to the right and rear opened a rapid fire, and some of its shells came shrieking into the rear of Palmer's and Johnson's divisions. Meanwhile, the crash and roar of battle came nearer and nearer, until the attack struck Reynolds on the flank and in rear. But he had been forewarned, and his line was swung backward, at right angles with his original position, to face the attack from the new direction. Even then he was forced backward until his men were stretched across the open field in rear of Palmer's division, and the battle was going on directly behind us. Something—a shell perhaps—set fire to a log house at the upper end of this field, not three hundred yards from our brigade. This house had been taken for a hospital the night before. It was filled with wounded men, too badly hurt to be taken farther away in the ambulances, and the regular hospital flag floated above it. This unfortunate house, with its maimed occupants, was brought between Reynolds's men and the attacking enemy when the former were driven into the open field; and, despite the non-combatant flag flying from the gable, it was riddled with shells from the Southern batteries. I do not charge upon those gunners a knowledge of the facts here given: their batteries were some distance away through the forest. However, whether they saw the house and the flag or not, their fire swept mercilessly through the house, while many a stout-hearted soldier, knowing what was there, wished that if he were to be hit at all, he might be struck dead at once, and so avoid such sickening horrors.

For the second time on that memorable day it looked for a few moments as if Palmer would have to face his men about and fight to the rear. Preparations to do this were made on the right of the division, but, fortunately, the appalling disaster which seemed imminent in the complete encompassing of the four divisions of the left was averted. The enemy yielded at last to the stubborn resistance, and Reynolds re-established his line—not upon the old ground entirely, but to conform to the altered situation. He was now the right of the army upon the original field, and four divisions comprised all that was left of the Army of the Cumberland in the position of the morning.

The divisions of the centre and the right—where were they? Brannan, and Wood, and Negley, and Davis, and Van Cleve, and gallant Sheridan, who held stubbornly his division even amid the panic at Stone River—where were they? And Rosecrans, commander of the army; Thomas, the hero in every fight; rash McCook and unfortunate Crittenden, chiefs of corps? Gone with the centre and the right of the army; gone with the reserves and the artillery; gone with the ammunition-trains; gone with everything that belonged to the Army of the Cumberland except four divisions of unconquered soldiers with half-filled cartridge-boxes and with hearts that knew no fear.

All gone? No! In the hush which came after Reynolds's desperate defence, and while hearts were yet beating fast from watching the doubtful fight, there arose far off to the right and rear a roar of musketry, telling that somewhere in the distance the flags of the Army of the Cumberland still waved before the foe, as they did with us. Long afterward we knew that this was Thomas—he who would not leave the field amid the wreck which surrounded him—Thomas, with his fragments, posted on a commanding ridge and bravely beating off the thickening foes about him.

The story of the disaster is an old one. It is hardly necessary to tell how Wood, in the main line on the right of Brannan, received an order from Rosecrans to support Reynolds, the second division in line to the left of Wood; how the gallant soldier hesitated to obey an order from which such disaster might come; how McCook, chief of corps, told Wood the order was imperative, and promised to put a reserve division into the line to take his place; how Wood withdrew from the line, as ordered, at the fatal moment when the enemy was preparing to attack; how the furious foe pressed through the gap, cut the army in two, struck the lines to right and left in flank and rear, swept the centre, the right wing and the reserves off the field, and doubled up and crushed the left wing as far as Reynolds's division, whose fortune has been told. All this is familiar enough now, but those who remained on the field in the four divisions of the left knew nothing of it then. They only knew that the line was broken beyond Reynolds, and that, although somewhere in the distance was a force which had not yet fled nor surrendered, they were left to bear alone the battle against Bragg's victorious army. The odds were five or six to one—perhaps more, maybe less. It did not matter to be precise: Bragg had men enough to put a double line of troops entirely around the four divisions. That was enough.

It was after midday when the disaster was complete and the divisions of Baird, Johnson, Palmer and Reynolds were able to understand the situation. I need not recount in detail the repeated attempts of the enemy to crush the line of the four divisions at one point and another. If the reader can recall the description of the first attack on Palmer's division, he will have a very fair example of the work which busied us at intervals during those long hours. The enemy was, of course, not unaware of his great success in dividing the army and driving off the greater part of it; nor was he lacking in efforts to improve the advantage by destroying the divisions which yet confronted him. Every attack, however, resulted in failure, and the assailants retired each time with heavy losses. At length it was evident to us that it had become difficult to bring even Longstreet's boasted troops up to attacks which met such sure and bloody repulses. There were but four divisions against an army, but the four would not be taken or driven.

With hands and faces blackened by the smoke and dust of battle those men stood devotedly to their posts, their ranks thinned by every assault, but their aim as fatal as ever. But one dread possessed them: ammunition ran short, and there were no supplies. In the intervals between the enemy's assaults the cartridge-boxes of dead comrades along the line and in the open field, where were the fierce struggles of the morning, were emptied of their contents to replenish the failing stock of the survivors. More precious than food and water, though they were sorely needed, were these inheritances from the dead.

The long afternoon wore slowly away. Night could not come too soon, but it seemed that never before was it so tardy. Officers and men were tortured by thirst. Their tongues were swollen and their lips black and distended, often to bursting. Speech became difficult or absolutely impossible. Officers mumbled their commands, and prayed silently for darkness to save them from enforced surrender or flight when the last cartridge should be spent.

Meantime, the relentless but cautious foe was carefully feeling his way around the flanks, apparently unwilling to venture boldly into the rear of the little army which he could not move by attack in front. A group of officers stood by their horses in rear of Hazen's brigade when the crack of an Enfield rifle was heard from the woods in rear across the open field. A bullet came whizzing into the group and killed a colonel's horse. Other shots followed from the same direction. The woods behind us were evidently occupied by the enemy's skirmishers. A captain volunteered to take his company and clear the woods, but ammunition was too scarce to waste on sharpshooters.

Word came at last, in some way, that Thomas, whose firing we heard far to the right and rear, was sorely pressed. A consultation was held by the four division generals. They needed a commander, but who should it be? Who would take command of that beleaguered force and undertake to extricate it from its surrounding peril or deliver it over to Thomas? Would Palmer? No. Would Reynolds? No. The stern duty of fighting their divisions until they could fight no longer, and doing then whatever desperate thing might be possible—that they would not fail in; but that responsibility was as great as they cared to assume. Up came Hazen then. "I'll take my brigade across that interval," said he, "and find Thomas if he's there." Palmer objected: it would make a gap in his line; it would expose one of his brigades to a thousand chances of destruction—for who could tell what forces of the enemy were in that interval or watching it?—and finally, it would take away the brigade which had most ammunition, for Hazen had husbanded his store. But something must be done. If the four divisions could hold out until night, somebody must command them and take them out if it could be done. Thomas was the proper commander, and he was needed. It was agreed that Hazen should make the attempt.

The brigade was withdrawn from the line which it had faithfully held all day, and some disposition made to fill the gap. Hazen formed his regiments in close masses, faced them to the right and rear, covered his front with a trusty battalion as skirmishers, waved an adieu to the comrades left behind, and plunged into the unknown forest in the direction of Thomas's firing. On and on went the brigade and came nearer and nearer to the ridge which Thomas held. Suddenly, the skirmishers strike obliquely an opposing line. They brush it away in an instant, but the warning is not lost. Keep more to the rear: no fighting now, though you should whip three to one. The fate of the four divisions rests upon that. With quick and steady tread the regiments move on. They clear the wood at last, climb the end of a ridge through a field of standing corn, and burst into an open field at the summit amid the wild cheers of Thomas's exhausted men, while Thomas himself, beloved of all the army, rides down to take Hazen by the hand. And not a moment too soon.

Almost at the very instant Thomas's skirmishers along the front of the ridge broke out into a rattling fire, and were seen falling back. The enemy was about to make his final effort, and it was to be against the flank where now lay Hazen's brigade. Quickly deploying his regiments, Hazen placed them in four lines, closed one upon another, and the men lay flat upon their faces. The yell of the enemy was heard in the wood below, and in a moment the declivity in front was covered with the heavy lines of the assailants. Then the first of Hazen's regiments was brought to its feet and poured its volley straight into the faces of the oncoming foe. The next regiment, and the next, and then the last, followed in quick succession. The echoes of the last volley had hardly died away before the enemy, who came on so confident and so strong, had disappeared, crushed and broken, into the forest, leaving the hillside strewn with his dead and wounded.

So ended the fighting. Night came down and shrouded the fierce combatants from each other's sight.

The dusky ranks take up the unfamiliar march with faces from the foe. Their drums are silent, and their bugles voice-less as the spirit-horns which marshal their heroic dead upon the farther shore. The shadowy ranks pass on into the night. Bearing their close-furled banners and their empty guns, they pass on into the sad and silent night of Chickamauga to await the glorious sun of Mission Ridge.

ROBERT LEWIS KIMBERLY.

NOTE.—The writer is aware that this narrative of the battle of Chickamauga differs so materially from the commonly-received impressions of that event that it ought to be supported by more than his own authority. The reader will observe that the main narrative is made up of the experiences of one command, that to which the writer belonged, and of which he can therefore speak as of things which he saw. For the statements of the general battle reference is made to official reports, as follows: (1) In regard to the first day's battle, see report of General W.S. Rosecrans, which may be found in vol. vii. of Putnam's Rebellion Record, p. 222 and following pages. (2) In regard to the complete isolation of the four divisions of the left during the second day, and the final opening of communication with General Thomas, see General W.B. Hazen's official report on p. 238 of the volume above quoted.

The writer also quotes, by permission, from letters from Generals Hazen and Thomas J. Wood, addressed to him within the present year. General Hazen says: "Do not forget about the length of time Thomas was cut off from us—how we could hear nothing from him; how neither Reynolds nor Palmer would assume command," etc. General Wood says, in reference to the great disaster on the second day: "About 11 A.M. I received the following order from General Rosecrans: 'The commanding general directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and support him.' As there was an entire division (Brannan's) between my division and Reynolds, I could only close upon the latter and support him by withdrawing my division from line and passing in rear of Brannan to the rear of Reynolds. This I did. Of course I knew it was an order involving perhaps the most momentous consequences, but General McCook concurred with me that it was so emphatic and positive as to demand instant obedience. I write you stubborn facts, and you can use them as such."

General Wood has been so severely criticised for his obedience to this fatal order that perhaps I should add this further explanation, contained in the letter from which I have quoted above: "After the battle was over, and it was apparent that Rosecrans's ill-considered order had led to a disaster, he offered as an explanation of it the statement that some staff-officer had reported to him that Brannan was out of line, and that he intended I should close to the left on Reynolds, and that I overlooked this direction to close to the left on Reynolds. Certainly, I overlooked it, or rather I did not see it, for it was not there to be seen. On the contrary, I was ordered to close up on Reynolds, and for a purpose—viz., to support him. I remark also that it was impossible for any man, on reading Rosecrans's order to me, to even remotely conjecture that it was based on the supposition that Brannan was out of line. He had previously ordered me to rest my left on Brannan's right, and I had reported to him that I had done so. Colonel Starling (of Crittenden's staff) testified before the McCook-Crittenden court of inquiry that he was with Rosecrans at the time the latter directed the order to be sent to me, and told him that Brannan was not out of line."



THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

UNWORTHY.

The storm had passed with the night, and the day was bright and joyful—almost hard in its brightness and cruel in its joy; for while the sun was shining overhead and the air was musical with the hum of insects and the song of birds, the flowers were broken, the tender plants destroyed, the uncut corn was laid as if a troop of horse had trampled down the crops, and the woods, like the gardens and the fields, were wrecked and spoiled. But of all the mourners sighing between earth and sky, Nature is the one that never repents, and the sun shines out over the saddest ruin as it shines out over the richest growth, as careless of the one as of the other.

Edgar came down from the Hill in the sunshine, handsome, strong, jocund as the day. As he rode through the famous double avenue of chestnuts he thought, What a glorious day! how clear and full of life after the storm! but he noted the wreckage too, and was concerned to see how the trees and fields had suffered. Still, the one would put forth new branches and fresh leaves next year; and if the other had been roughly handled, there was yet a salvage to be garnered. The ruin was not irreparable, and he was in the mood to make the best of things. Do not the first days of a happy love ever give the happiest kind of philosophy for man and woman to go on?

And he was happy in his love. Who more so? He was on his way now to Ford House as a man going to his own, serene and confident of his possession. He had left his treasure overnight, and he went to take it up again, sure to find it where he had laid it down. He had no thought of the thief who might have stolen it in the dark hours, of the rust that might have cankered it in the chill of the gray morning. He only pictured to himself its beauty, its sweetness and undimmed radiance—only remembered that this treasure was his, his own and his only, unshared by any, and known in its excellence by none before him.

He rode up to the door glad, dominant, assured. Life was very pleasant to the strong man and ardent lover—the English gentleman with his happiness in his own keeping, and his future marked out in a clear broad pathway before him. There was no cloud in his sky, no shadow on his sea: it was all sunshine and serenity—man the master of his own fate and the ruler of circumstance—man the supreme over all things, a woman's past included.

Not seeing Leam in the garden, Edgar rang the bells and was shown into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. The down-drawn blinds had darkened the room to a pleasant gloom for eyes somewhat overpowered by the blazing sunshine and the dazzling white clouds flung like heaps of snow against the hard bright blue of the sky; yet something struck more chill than restful on the lover as he came through the doorway, little fanciful or sentimental as he was.

Leam, who had not been in bed through the night, was sitting on the sofa in the remotest and darkest part of the room. She rose as he entered—rose only, not coming forward to meet him, but standing in her place silent, pale, yet calm and collected. She did not look at him, but neither did she blush nor tremble. There was something statuesque, almost dead, about her—something that was not the same Leam whom he had known from the first.

He went up to her, both hands held out. She shrank back and folded hers in each other, still not looking at him.

"Why, Leam, what is it?" he cried in amazement, pained, shocked at her action. Was she in her right mind? Had she heard of his former attentions to Adelaide, divined their ultimate meaning, and been seized with a mad idea of sacrifice and generosity? It must be with Adelaide, he thought, rapidly reviewing his past. He was absolutely safe about Violet Cray, who had never known his name; and those later Indian affairs were dead and as good as buried. What, then, did it mean?

"No, not till you have heard me," said Leam in a low voice. "And never after."

"My darling! what is it?" he repeated.

"You must not call me dear names: I am unworthy," said Leam. "No," checking him as he would have spoken, smiling with a sense of relief that her craze—if it was a craze—went to the visionary side of her own unworthiness, and was not due to any knowledge of his misdemeanors, as she might think them. "Do not speak. I have to tell you. I had forgotten it," she went on to say in the same tense, compressed manner—the manner of one who has a task to get through, and has gathered all her strength for the effort, leaving none to be squandered in emotion—"I was so happy in these last days I had forgotten it. Now I have remembered, and we must part."

Edgar was grieved to see her in such deadly trouble, for it was easy to see her pain beneath her still exterior, but he was confident, and if grieved not afraid. Leam's little life, so innocent and uneventful as it must have been, could hold no such tremendous evil, could have been smirched with no such damning stain, as that at which she seemed to hint. Grant even that there had been something more between her and Alick Corfield than he would quite like to hear—which was his first thought—still, that more must needs be very little, could but be very simple. His wife must be spotless—that he knew, and he would marry none whose past was not as unsullied as new-fallen snow, as unsullied as must be her future—absolute purity—the unruffled emotions of a maidenhood undisturbed until now even by dreams, even by visions. He owed it to himself and his position that his wife, man of many loves as he was, should be this; but at the worst the childish affection of brother and sister, which was all that could possibly have been between Leam and that awkward young gangrel Alick Corfield, could have nothing in it that he ought to take to heart or that should influence him. Yes, he might smile and not be afraid. And indeed her delicate conscience was another grace in his eyes. He loved her more than ever for the honesty that must confess all its little sins. Sweet Leam! Leam having to confess! Leam! she who was almost too modest for an ordinary lover's comfort, needing to be tamed out of her savage bashfulness, not to be reproved for transgressing the proper reticence of an English maid. It was a pretty play, but it was only a play.

"Come and sit by me and make full confession, my darling," he said lovingly.

"I will stand where I am. You sit," said Leam, without looking at him.

He seated himself on the sofa. "And now what has my little culprit to say for herself?" he asked pleasantly, putting on a playful magisterial air.

"It is over," said Leam, her hands pressed in each other with so tight a clasp that the strained knuckles were white and started. "You must not love me: I cannot be your wife."

"Why?" He showed his square white teeth beneath the golden sweep of his moustache, his moist red lips parted, always smiling.

"I have done a great crime," said Leam in a low, monotonous voice.

"A crime! That is a large word for a small peccadillo—larger than any sin of yours merits, my sweetheart."

"You do not know," said Leam with a despairing gesture. "How can you know when you have not heard?"

"Well, what may be its name?" he asked, willing to humor her.

She paused for a moment: then with a visible effort, drawing in her breath, she said, in a voice that was unnaturally calm and low, "I killed madame."

"Leam!" cried Edgar, "how can you talk such nonsense? The thing is growing beyond a joke. Unsay your words; they are a wrong done to me."

He had started to his feet while he spoke, and now stood before her with a strangely scared and startled face. Naturally, as such a man would, he was resolute not to accept such a terrible confession, and one so unlikely, so impossible; but something in the girl's voice and manner, something in its sad, still reality, seemed to overpower his determination to find this simply a bad joke which she was playing off on his credulity. And then the thing fitted only too well. He had heard half a dozen times of Madame de Montfort's sudden death, and how very strange it was that the draught which she had taken so often with impunity before should have been found so laden with prussic acid on the first night of her homecoming as to kill her in an instant—how strange, too, that not the strictest search or inquiry could come upon a trace of such poison bought or possessed by any member of the family, for what police-officer would look to find a sixty-minim bottle of prussic acid concealed among the coils of a young girl's hair? And when Leam said in that quiet if desperate manner that it was she who had killed madame, her words made the whole mystery clear and solved the as yet unsolved problem.

Nevertheless, he would not believe her, but said again, passionately, "Unsay your words, Leam: they offend me."

"I cannot," said Leam.

He laughed scornfully. "Kill Madame de Montfort. Absurd! You could not. It was impossible for a girl like you to kill any one," he cried in broken sentences. "How could you do such a thing, Leam, and not be found out? Silly child! you are raving."

"I put poison into the bottle, and she died," said Leam in a half whisper.

"Leam! you a murderess!"

She quivered at the word, at the tone of loathing, of abhorrence, of almost terror, in which he said it, but she held her terrible ground. She had begun her martyrdom, her agony of atonement for the sake of truth and love, and she must go through now to the end. "Yes," she said, "I am a murderess. Now you know all, and why you must not love me."

"I cannot believe you," he pleaded helplessly. "It is too horrible. My darling, say that you have told me this to try me—that it is not true, and that you are still my own, my very own, my pure and sinless Leam."

He knelt at her feet, clasping her waist. He was not of those who, like Alick, could bear the sin of the beloved as the sacrifice of pride, of self, of soul to that love. He himself might be stained from head to heel with the soil of sin, but his wife must be, as has been said, without flaw or blemish, immaculate and free from fault. Any lapse, involving the loss of repute should it ever be made public, would have been the death-knell of his hopes, the requiem of his love; but such an infamy as this! If true it was only too final.

"Oh, no! no! do not do that," cried Leam, trying to unclasp his hands. "Do not kneel to me. I ought to kneel to you," she added with a little cry that struck with more than pity to Edgar's heart, and that nearly broke her down for so much relaxing of the strain, so much yielding to her grief, as it included.

"Leam, tell me you are joking—tell me that you did not do this awful thing," he cried again, his handsome face, blanched and drawn, upturned to her in agony.

She put her hands over her eyes. "I cannot lie to you," she said. "And I must not degrade you. Do not touch me: I am not good enough to be touched by you."

He loosened his arms, and she shrank from him almost as if she faded away.

"Why did you deceive me?" he groaned. "You should not have let me love you, knowing the truth."

"I did not know that you loved me, or that I loved you, till that night," she pleaded piteously. "If I had known I would have prevented it. I have told you as soon as I remembered."

"You have broken my heart," he cried, flinging himself on the sofa, his face buried in the cushions. And then, strong man as he was, a brave soldier and an English country gentleman, he burst into a passion of tears that shook him as the storm had shaken the earth last night—tears that were the culmination of his agony, not its relief.

Leam stood by him as pale as the shattered lilies in the garden. What could she do? How could she comfort him? Tainted and dishonored, she dared not even lay her hand on his—her infamous and murderous hand, and he so pure and noble! Neither could she pray for him, nor yet for herself. Pray? to whom? To God? God had turned His face away from her, even as her lover had now turned away his: He was angry with her, and still unappeased. She dared not pray to Him, and He would not hear her if she did. The saints were no longer the familiar and parental deities, grave and helpful, to whom she could refer all her sorrows and perplexities, as in earlier times, sure of speedy succor. The teaching of the later days had destroyed the simple fetichism of childhood; and now—afraid of God, by whom she was unforgiven; the saints swept out of her spiritual life like those mist-wreaths of morning which were once taken for solid towers and impregnable fortresses; the Holy Mother vanished with the rest; all spiritual help a myth, all spiritual consolation gone—how could she pray? Lonely as her life had been since mamma died, it had never been so lonely as now, when she felt that God had abandoned her, and that she had sacrificed her lover to her sense of truth and honor and what was due to his nobility.

She stood by him and watched his passionate outburst with anguish infinitely more intense than his own. To have caused him this sorrow was worse than to have endured it for herself. There was no sacrifice of self that she could not have made for his good. Spaniard as she was, she would have been above jealousy if another woman would have made him happier than she; and if her death would have given him gain or joy, she would have died for him as another would have lived. Yet it was she, and she only, who was causing him this pain, who was destroying his happiness and breaking his heart.

She dared not speak nor move. It took all the strength she drew from silence to keep her from breaking into a more terrible storm of grief than even that into which he had fallen. She dared not make a sign, but simply stood there, doing her best to bear her heavy burden to the end. The only feeling that she had for herself was that it was cruel not to let her die, and why did not mute anguish kill her?

For the rest, she knew that she had done the thing that was right, however hard. It was not fitting that she should be his wife; and it was better that he should suffer for the moment than be degraded for all time by association with one so shameful, so dishonored, as herself.

Presently, Edgar cleared his eyes and lifted up his face. He was angry with himself for this unmanly burst of feeling, and because angry with himself disposed for the moment to be hard on her. She was standing there in exactly the same spot and just the same attitude as before, her head a little bent, her hands twined in each other, her eyes with the pleading, frightened look of confession turned timidly to him; but as he raised himself from the sofa, pushing back his hair and striding to the window as if to hide the fact of his having shed tears, she turned her eyes to the floor. She was beginning to feel now that she must not even look at him. The gulf that separated them, dug by her own ineffaceable crime, was so deep, the distance so wide!

A painful silence fell between them: then Edgar, not looking at her, said in a constrained voice, "I will keep your dreadful secret, Leam, sacredly for ever. You feel sure of that, I hope. But, as you say, we must part. I do not pretend to be better than other men, but I could not take as my wife one who had been guilty of such an awful crime as this."

"No," said Leam, her parched lips scarcely able to form a word at all.

"Your secret will be safe with me," he repeated.

She did not reply. In giving up himself she had given up all that made life lovely, and the refuse might as well go as not.

"But we must part."

"Yes," said Leam.

He turned back to the window, desperately troubled. He did really love her, passionately, sincerely. He longed at this very moment to take her in his arms and tell her that he would accept her crime if only he might have herself. Had he not been the master of the Hill and a Harrowby he would have done so, but the master of the Hill and the head of the house of Harrowby had a character to maintain and a social ideal to keep pure. He could not bring into such a home as his, present to his mother as her daughter, to his sisters as their sister, a girl who by her own confession was a murderess—a girl who, if the law had its due, would be hanged by the neck in the precincts of the county jail till she was dead. He might have been sinful enough in his own life, in the ordinary way of men—and truly there were passages in his past that would scarcely bear the light—but what were the worst of his misdemeanors compared with this awful crime? No: he must resolutely crush the last lingering impulse of tenderness, and leave her to work through her own tribulation, as he also must work through his.

"But we must part," he said for a third time.

Her lips quivered. She did not answer, only bent her head in sign of acquiescence.

"It is hard to say it, harder still to do; and I who loved you so dearly!" cried Edgar with the angry despair of a man forced against himself to give up his desire.

She put up her hands. "Don't!" she said with a sharp cry. "I cannot bear to hear about your love."

He gave a sudden sob. Her love for him was very precious to him—his for her very strong.

"Why did you tell me?" he then said. "And yet you did the right thing to tell me: I was wrong to say that. It was good of you, Leam—noble, like yourself."

"I love you. That is not being noble," she answered slowly and with infinite pathos. "I could not have deceived you after I remembered."

"You are too noble to deceive," he said, holding out his hand.

Leam turned away. "I am not fit to touch your hand," she said, the very pride of contrition in her voice—pride for him, if humiliation for herself.

"For this once," he pleaded.

"I am unworthy," she answered.

At this moment little Fina came jumping into the room. She had in her hand a rose-colored scarf that had once been poor madame's, and which the nurse, turning out an old box of hers, had found and given to the child.

After she had kissed Edgar, played with his breloques, looked at the works of his watch, plaited his beard into three strings, and done all that she generally did in the way of welcome, she shook out the gauze scarf over her dress.

"This was mamma's—my own mamma's," she said. "Leam will never tell me about mamma: you tell me, Major Harrowby," coaxingly.

"I cannot: I did not know her," said Edgar in an altered voice, while Leam looked as if her judgment had come, but bore it as she had borne all the rest, resolutely.

"I want to hear about mamma, and who killed her," pouted Fina.

"Hush, Fina," said Leam in an agony: "you must not talk."

"You always say that, Leam, when I want to hear about mamma," was the child's petulant reply.

"Go away now, dear little Fina," said Edgar, who felt all that Leam must feel at these inopportune words, and who, moreover, weak as he was in this direction, was longing for one last caress.

"I will go and send her nurse," said Leam, half staggering to the door.

Had anything been wanting to show her the impossibility of their marriage, this incident of Fina's random but incisive words would have been enough.

"Leam! not one word more?" he asked as he stood against the door, holding the handle in his hand.

"No," she said hopelessly. "What words can we have together?"

"And we are parting like this, and for ever?"

"For ever. Yes, it has to be for ever," she answered almost mechanically.

"Leam, why did you love me?" he cried, taking her hands in his and keeping them.

"How could I help it? Who would not love you?" she answered.

Again he gave a sudden heavy sob, and again the poor pale, tortured face reflected the pain it witnessed.

"Good-bye!" she then said, drawing her hands from his. "Remember only, when you blame me, that I told you, not to let you be degraded. And forgive me before I die, for I loved you—ah, better than my own life!"

With a sudden impulse she stooped forward, took back his right hand in both of hers, pressed it to her bosom, kissed it passionately again and again, then turned with one faint, half-suppressed moan, and left him. And as he heard her light feet cross the hall, wearily, heavily, as the feet of a mourner dragging by the grave of the beloved, he knew that his dream of love was over. But, with the strange satire of the senses in moments of sorrow, noting ever the most trivial things, Edgar noted specially the powerful perfume of a spray of lemon-plant which she bruised as she pressed his hand against her breast.

That evening Edgar Harrowby went down to the rectory. He was strong enough in physique and in some phases of will, but he was not strong all through, and he had never been able to face unassisted the first desolation of a love-disappointment.

Adelaide, in a picturesque dress and her most becoming mood, welcomed him with careful cordiality as a prodigal whose husks, clinging about his coat, were to be handled tenderly as if they were pearls. She saw that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of letting well alone—also of that of catching a heart at the rebound—she made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like the Spartan boy's fox without making a sign. At last, however, her curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve. She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was only a woman, after all.

"And when did you see that eccentric little lady, Miss Leam?" she asked with a smile—not a bitter smile, merely one of careless amusement, as if Leam was acknowledged to be a comical subject of conversation and one naturally provoking a smile.

"Dear Adelaide," said Edgar, not looking at her, but speaking with unusual earnestness, "do not speak ill of Leam Dundas—neither to me nor to any one else. I ask it as a favor."

Adelaide turned pale. "Tell me only one thing, Edgar: are you going to marry her?" she asked, her manner as earnest as his own, but with a different meaning.

"No. Marry her? Good God, no!" was his vehement reply. Then more tenderly: "But for all that do not speak ill of her. Will you promise, dear, good friend?"

"Yes, I will promise," she answered with what was for her fervor and a sudden look of intense relief. "I never will again, Edgar; and I am sorry if I have hurt you at any time by what I may have said. I did not mean to do so."

"No, I know you did not. I can appreciate your motives, and they were good," Edgar answered with emotion; and then their two pairs of fine blue eyes met, and both pairs were moist.

This was just at the moment when Leam, pale, rigid as a statue, thickly veiled, and holding a box in her hand, met Mr. Gryce in Steel's Wood, he having gone to catch such rare specimens of sleeping lepidoptera as the place afforded and his eyes could discern.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

BLOTTED OUT.

Gone! no one knew where. Gone in the night like a falling star, like a passing cloud—gone and left no trace, vanished like the sunshine of yesterday or the flowers of last spring! No one knew what had become of her, and no one knew where to look for her; for the sole information gathered by the scared neighbors was, that Leam Dundas was missing and no one had seen her go.