Panting, swearing, whooping and bleeding, the Confederate lines had been pushed on, until they had reached a point nearly as far in advance as in the former attack. But here, beneath the storm of canister, case-shot and grape-shot, solid-shot, shell and musketry, human endurance failed and even the madness of intoxication grew useless. The hurricane of metal was too deadly for mortal man to withstand. No efforts could urge them further forward; and finding it impossible to run to the end that gauntlet of iron and lead, they once more wavered and broke, faced about and sought the shelter of the woods, leaving Carter's Field burdened with its second terrible harvest of death for that day—the dead in actual heaps and winrows, and the wounded one mere struggling, writhing and groaning mass.

But why repeat the story that has no variety except in horror? Again and again, with fresh troops flung every time to the front, that mad attempt to carry Malvern Hill was repeated and repulsed. An attack—a repulse; and each time with added but never-varied slaughter. The consumption of raw spirits among the rebel ranks must have been enormous during the day; for every rebel canteen found on the field had been filled with that maddening compound, with or without the fiendish addition of the sulphur and nitre of gunpowder. Their attacks were like the rolling of billows toward a beach: their waves of battle swept up with raging fierceness, but broke and receded at every dash; and, like the waves when the tide is fast ebbing, the surging lines broke farther off at each advance. The attack on Malvern Hill had failed—at what a fearful expenditure of valor and courage on the part of the Union troops, only those who participated can ever know;—and at what a cost of life to the rebels, only that Eye which looked down from a greater height than that of the signal-officer on the gable of the old mansion, could have power to measure!

During the last of these rebel attacks, the gun-boats were signalled to cease firing, lest their shells might prove equally fatal to friends and foes; and the Union forces were ordered to prepare for an advance, as Porter had determined to act, temporarily at least, on the offensive, and thus crown the events of a day which had been virtually one of splendid victory for the Union arms. Just when the rebels were halting and wavering under the effects of the renewed artillery fire poured out to meet them, Burns', Meagher's, Dana's and French's brigades, of the right, were ordered to charge. The order did not come too soon for the brave fellows who had been chafing like caged lions at the necessity of fighting all day on the defensive. Right gallantly and with ringing cheers did they spring forward, until within a hundred yards of the enemy, when they halted and sent a scorching fire of musketry directly into their faces. Couch's division on the left had been thrown forward almost at the same moment, and the order was obeyed with equal alacrity and effect. Then the whole line was ordered to advance, and away they went with ringing shouts, like so many confined school-boys suddenly let out for an hour's play, but going, alas!—to a game of "ball" that entailed death on many of the players.

The brave Irishmen of Meagher were already in the advance, blazing and chopping away with that indomitable good humor which seems to be the normal condition of the Hibernian when fairly launched into his darling fight. In this general advance Duryea's blue, red and baggy Zouaves led the way, as they had done in many a fight before, and always with success,—dashing savagely on the foe with ear-splitting shouts peculiar to themselves, and borrowed from the well-known war-cry of the corresponding regiments in the French service. The long Federal line of bristling steel pushed on at double-quick with irresistible force; and it was only for an instant that any portion of the Confederate line stood to meet it. At last discouraged and appalled—perhaps as much by the appearance and the war-cry of the never-defeated Zouaves as by any other agency that could have been brought to bear upon them,—they first wavered in front, then grew unsteady in the main body, and at last broke and fled in confusion and indecent haste, seeking once more the shelter of the woods from which they were no more to emerge as an attacking party.

The Federal troops were not allowed to follow them to the woods, night falling and the commander being indisposed to allow his exhausted troops any further exertion. The rebels left, in this last attack, several dismounted pieces of artillery, many blown-up caissons, and thousands of small arms, besides a thousand unhurt prisoners and a field literally covered with dead and wounded. The battle of Malvern Hill was over, though the rebel artillery continued to belch at intervals until after ten o'clock at night, the Federal advanced batteries replying to every fire. At length, and when the still summer night had thus far fallen on the late scene of conflict, the last rebel shot was sullenly fired, the last response was made by the Federal gunners, and the long conflict ceased. The baffled and beaten rebels, who had certainly fought with bravery and determination worthy of a better cause, fell back behind the sheltering woods and commenced their final retreat towards Richmond, having received at last a satisfactory taste of the quality yet remaining in the outnumbered, harrassed, but never-discouraged and ever-dangerous Army of the Potomac.

Owing to the fact that this battle was so largely an artillery-duel, as has before been remarked, the opportunities for the display or observation of personal bravery were comparatively limited, and mostly confined to a short period towards the close of the battle. That the Union troops would have shown the same personal dash and daring throughout, had the plan of the General in command made hand-to-hand fighting advisable—was fully proved by the short conflict which closed the day. In that short period occupied by the advance of the two wings and afterwards of the main body, two or three incidents occurred, which some of the combatants will yet remember when their attention is thus called to them, and without which this battle-picture, necessarily very defective, and aiming much more at truth than sensation, would be found almost destitute of details.

In the first advance, no less than three color-bearers, carrying the same flag of one of the regiments of Meagher's Irish brigade, were shot down within less than five minutes. When the third fell, a Lieutenant in the color-company of the same regiment, who had not many months before deserted the mock combats of the stage for the sanguinary fights of actual warfare, concluded to try his success at carrying the dangerous bunting. He seized the staff and held it, himself untouched, for several minutes, while bullets were actually riddling the flag. At the end of that time a stalwart Irishman, finding his rifle-barrel heated and the ramrod jammed in attempting to load, made two or three ineffectual jerks at the rod, found that it was impossible to remove it; then grasped the weapon by the muzzle, whirled it half a dozen times around his head, bringing the butt down in each instance with crushing force, on the head of a foe; and finally, giving it another and longer whirl, with a wild "Whooruh!" that might have originated among the bogs of Connaught, sent it whirling among the enemy with such force that it literally plowed its way through them and left a perceptible track of fallen foemen. "Be the Hill of Howth!" roared Paddy, when he had completed this exploit. "It's meself hasn't the bit of a muskit left to fight wid at all at all! Here, Captain!" to the Lieutenant holding the flag, "it's meself should be houldin' that, and not you!" and at the word he grasped the staff out of the officer's hands and plunged still farther forward among the enemy with it, than it had before been carried by either of the bearers, coming out of the fight at last without a scratch.

At very nearly the same time, and at the point in the rebel front assailed by Meagher's brigade, another scene was presented, perhaps unexampled in the history of war. A Georgia regiment (Georgia has sent out some of the very best and most determined fighters of the whole rebel army) was in the front and immediately opposed to the jolly New York Irishmen. The evening being a hot one, most of the Irish boys had prepared themselves for the charge by throwing off knapsacks, coats, and even hats, so as to "fight asier." Their habit of doing this, by the way, in hot weather and in the excitement of battle, has not only cost the government a round sum for new clothing and equipments, but given many opportunities to the Confederates for boasting of a victory when they had won nothing of the kind. They have regarded the thrown-away coats and knapsacks as evidence of a panic and a rout, when the fact is that they have only evidenced Paddy's desire, quoted above, to "fight asy."

In the present instance, Capt. S——, a young Irishman, of Meagher's Brigade, a fire-boy and a gymnast, was surrounded by a knot of his fellows, and they were making good progress in driving back the Georgia regiment, when the Captain encountered the Major of the Georgians. Whether something in the eye of each defied the other, will perhaps never be known; but certain it is that Captain S—— sprung for a single combat with the Major, and that the Major, quite as willing, sprung forward with a corresponding intention. A few passes were made with the sword by each, and then both seemed to forget the use of the weapon. In half a minute swords were dropped, and the two combatants were clenched, pounding away with their fists! Something after the manner of the armies of old time when two great warriors met single-handed, the combatants on both sides seemed to stand still for the moment and look on at this singular struggle—this novelty in deadly war. Captain S—— was the heavier man, but the Georgia Major the nimbler, and they seemed very well matched. The Confederates were giving way on either side, and the Georgia regiment must necessarily retreat decidedly in a moment. The effort of Captain S—— accordingly seemed to be directed to first "knocking" the Major "out of time," and then making a captive of him; while probably the Major had no fancy for that termination of the affair. At length the rush came from behind and on either side, and the whole group were irresistibly borne backward. Some of the Georgia soldiers grasped the Major from behind, and attempted to drag him off. Some of the Irishmen rushed forward to assist in holding him. In a minute more, not two men, but dozens, were engaged in a fist-fight, not a weapon being used. Directly Captain S—— managed to get in a blow under the chin of the Major, and in the neighborhood of the gullet, which sent him backwards nearly insensible. As he fell he kicked with mechanical force, and the kick striking the Captain in the lower abdomen, "doubled him up" effectually. The Georgians were still laboring to save their commander from capture, and Captain S—— and his men to take him, or as much as they could of him. The finale was that the Georgia Major was lugged off and rescued by his men, and that Captain S——, clinging to him with the proverbial Kilkenny tenacity, succeeded in dragging off him his coat, sword and belts, and revolver,—leaving the foe very much in the condition of his own men—that of shirt and trowsers.

It is a somewhat pitiful conclusion to this little reminiscence of S——'s odd adventure, that the next morning, in his tent, showing the captured weapons to one of his comrades, the revolver went off accidentally and blew the Captain's left arm to fragments! Such are the chances of war—a soldier escaping unhurt amid a very rain of destroying missiles, and meeting wounds and disablement from a trifling accident in a moment of fancied security!

The third incident of that day, and still more notable than either of the others, occurred on the left while the incidents previously recorded were taking place on the right and in the centre. When Couch's division were just advancing to the attack and at the very moment when the conflict began to grow close and deadly, some of the men in the front, and the rebels as well, witnessed a spectacle equally startling and unexplainable. A figure in white burst suddenly through from the Union rear to the front, prostrating a dozen men with the irresistible rapidity of the movement; and then it sprung into the very thick of the rebels and commenced its most singular and primitive warfare. Of the hundreds who unavoidably saw the apparition (for apparition it certainly seemed) not one will ever forget it or remember it without a shudder. The figure was that of a very tall man, evidently of immense natural strength, with a face shrunk to skeleton thinness and terrible staring eyes rendered more fearful by the heavy red beard and long matted hair. It was dressed in what appeared to be white trousers, but barefoot; and its upper clothing seemed to be a shirt beneath and a loose flowing white robe hanging from the shoulders. In its hand this terrible figure carried a club of green sapling oak, heavily knotted at the end, about five feet in length, two inches in diameter at the butt and tapering to where it was grasped at the lower end. A more effective weapon in close combat could not be devised; and with this weapon, and with fierce yells that seemed like those emanating from the throat of an infuriate madman, this strange combatant began laying about him in the rebel ranks, crushing heads, breaking arms, and killing and disabling scores of armed men. No sword could reach him, and no bullet appeared to strike him, though dozens of the rebels discharged muskets and even revolvers at him, at close range, when it began to be apparent on which side he was fighting. Up went that mighty flail, and down it came again on the heads of the human tares of rebeldom who so needed threshing out in the very garner of wrath. More than one of the Union men in the vicinity of the strange spectacle, who happened to have been classic readers in other days, gazing at the white figure and its terrible prowess, thought of Castor and Pollux and the apparitions in white which decided the battle on the shore of Lake Regilius, when the Thirty Cities warred against Rome. But there was nothing of the supernatural in this figure; for after a few moments of wonderful immunity in the midst of that plunging fire, and after a destruction of life which seemed really wonderful to be accomplished by one single man,—fate withdrew the shield which had been interposed before him. The great club was full uplifted in the air, when the combatants saw him suddenly waver and stagger, then saw the deadly weapon drop, a stream of spouting blood from the wounded breast gush over the white garment, and that tall figure and ghastly face sink downward to the earth, one last long yell, wilder and more fearful than any that had preceded it, sounding the signal of his death, and the battle again going on over the trampled body.

It was not until hours after that the mystery of the white figure was fully explained. The poor fellow had been a soldier of one of the Western regiments, ill with fever, and sent on to Harrison's Landing with the first of the troops who reached the James. In his delirium he had no doubt heard the booming of the cannon in the morning attack, and gathered the impression that a battle must be going on and that he should not be absent. He had managed, by some means, to elude the guards and the few hospital nurses yet spared to the army; had escaped from the temporary hospital, barefoot and clothed only in his white drawers, shirt, and a sheet thrown around his shoulders; had made his way, unseen, through the woods and over the marshes lying between Harrison's Landing and Malvern; had provided himself probably by means of his still remaining jack-knife, with that singular but fatal weapon of offence; and then, nerved with fictitious strength by his fever and the sights and sounds of battle raging before him, he had rushed into the conflict as before described, dying a death more noble than the lingering decay of fever, after working such destruction among the rebel ranks as he might never have been able to do in the pride of his health and manhood.

And here this extended picture of one of the most important battles ever yet fought on this continent, must close, except so far as in side-issues connected with it may happen to be involved some of the persons more intimately concerned in the progress of this relation.



CHAPTER XIX.

JOHN CRAWFORD THE ZOUAVE, AND BOB WEBSTER, DITTO—BUSH-FIGHTING, WITH VARIOUS RESULTS—THE BURNING HOUSE AND A STRANGE DEATH-SCENE—JOHN CRAWFORD BECOMES A MAN OF FAMILY.

It has not yet been our fortune to happen upon John Crawford the Zouave, in the search for whom we have stumbled upon Malvern Hill and its fearful panorama of bloodshed. As a member of the Advance Guard, he, was not likely to be absent from the fierce charge made by his corps at the close of that day; and he was not. It is at the very moment of the conclusion of that charge, that the quest becomes successful.

John Crawford participated in that general advance, in the front rank of the Zouaves, in high health and spirits, and yelling quite as loudly and discordantly as any of his companions. This was not his first adventure with the bayonet, for he had gone unwounded through the determined charges of his corps, with the same deadly weapon, at Williamsburgh and Fair Oaks; and he had grown to have confidence in himself and in any body of men that used the modern footman's lance with the due ferocity. Though five years younger than his brother Richard, John Crawford looked older than he did even in his sickness; for the exposures of a year had browned his round and ruddy face, if it had not dimmed the brightness of his blue eye; and the heavy waved brown hair and moustache in which he retained so prominent a characteristic of his Gaelic ancestry of a hundred years before, added materially to the appearance of manly maturity. Were it a preux chevalier sitting under this verbal lens for his photograph, there might be difficulty in proceeding farther in this description; for though your knight of old seems to have been splendidly oblivious as to the needs of clean linen, and able to wear one surcoat and one suit of armor for any length of time without becoming repugnant to the nose of his lady when brought-into the opportunity for an embrace,—yet the heroes of this day have sore need of occasional aid from the washerwoman, and even the tailor becomes necessary for the replenishing of worn-out and faded garments. John Crawford the Zouave—the truth must be told—though he showed very little shirt, showed that little in an unclean condition; and the baggy red of his trousers and the hanging blue of his jacket, both looked shabby and discolored. Not much more could be said in favor of the white and yellow turban with the dirty white tassel hanging behind, ostensibly worn on his head but really drooping on the back part of it, quite as much as were the ladies' bonnets two or three years ago when the suggestion was made that they "should be carried behind them in a spoon." And yet this soiled and uncombed man was a soldier—every inch a soldier—and had in him all the materials for the making of a hero.

We have said that John Crawford was in good health and spirits, after sharing with the army in all its battles, fatigues and privations. He was so, not alone because the corps was somewhat better managed and cared for than many of the others, but because he was a sober man and one physically well-educated. He did not heat his blood for fever, and debilitate his system for exposure, by the use of liquor whenever he could reach it; and having been a member of the Seventh before he joined the Zouaves, and a habitue of the Gymnasium so much affected by the members of that regiment, he had acquired some capacity of bearing fatigue before entering upon that soldier-life which of all demands the most unrelaxing endurance.

A picture very little different from that just presented, though taller and lanker in figure, was to be found in Bob Webster, John Crawford's comrade and file-closer, who went into the charge that evening at his side. A little less hardy, more of a giant in strength, and with a ruddy tinge on the end of his long nose, that had been acquired by more years and more whiskey than confessed to by Crawford—such was the only difference observable in the two men of the dirty white turbans and the discolored uniforms, who went into battle together.

The point of the enemy's front at which the Zouaves struck in the charge, was considerably to the right of the Union centre (the enemy's left) and very near to the edge of the wood bounding Carter's Field on the North. The company to which the two comrades belonged had the extreme right, (the post of honor), and they were consequently, when the charge had penetrated so far that the rebels began to give way, almost in the edge of the woods. Some of the men in a South Carolina regiment, the enemy's extreme left, seemed to fight like fiends, supported by a battery of the same State that it became necessary to capture. This was finally swept, and the South Carolinians at last gave way, falling back into the woods, now beginning to grow dark, but firing from behind trees as they retired. Too much excited to heed the recall just then sounded, a dozen or two of the Zouaves, remembering their unexpended ammunition, tried their hand for the time at bush-fighting, with more or less success. Some of them were shot down, but others succeeded in killing or capturing the peculiar fugitives of whom they started in chase. Crawford and Webster had so far succeeded in keeping together, and neither had received even a scratch.

One of the rebels, conspicuous by the fact that he had lost or thrown off his coat and was consequently in "Irish uniform," had been especially followed by half a dozen of the Zouaves, as he fell back farther and farther into the woods, dodging and firing from behind trees, and proving that he must have come from one of the hill regions of the Palmetto State, where the hunting of wild beasts yet keeps the woodman in train for a soldier. Not less than three of the Zouaves had paid for their tenacity with their lives, by shots sent from that single long-rifle. Crawford and Webster, fancying that they bore charmed lives, still kept on the chase, catching glimpses through the dusk, of the rebel's shirt, as it dodged in and out behind the trees. In this manner they had penetrated perhaps a quarter of a mile into the woods, the sounds of the battle growing more and more indistinct behind them, when a broad light burst up through the trees to the North, shining redly through boles and branches and indicating a fire in the immediate neighborhood.

"What is that?" said Webster, his attention momentarily distracted from the rebel whom he had seen dodging behind a tree but a moment before.

"A fire of some kind," said Crawford, looking in the same direction. "From its size, it may be a burning house."

"Humph! though it is hot enough without, I shouldn't mind being at one more fire!" said Webster, who, like most New Yorkers of a certain age, had once in his time "run wid der masheen."

"But where is that gentleman from the South?" asked Crawford. "He may give us a pop directly—look out!"

"The no-coated devil!" said Webster. "He was dodging behind that big oak a moment ago. I think I see the edge of his shirt—yes!"

He did see the tip of the Southerner's shirt, and some one else felt him; for at that instant "crack!" went the long rifle, and John Crawford gave vent to an "Ough!" that partook of the mingled characters of an oath and a yell, staggering up against the nearest tree at the same moment, with a rifle-bullet through his left fore-arm, and feeling that sentiment of disgust at the stomach which is inseparable from the forcible entrance of any substance into the human body, in the shape of a wound.

"Hallo, Jack! Eh, you did it, did you?—d—n you!" sputtered Webster, as he heard the report and saw the effect. Of course the first part of his remark was addressed to his comrade, and the last to the rebel, who had made such a capital shot that he allowed too much of his figure to be exposed while making his survey. In an instant, Webster's piece was drawn up, and a second "crack!" rang out through the trees.

"Ten to one I hit him!" cried Webster. "For the first time I got a fair view of one side of his dirty white shirt. But how badly are you hurt, Jack? Where are you hit?"

"Hurt a good deal, but not seriously, I think," answered Crawford, a little faintly. "He hit me here in the left arm, below the elbow. I think the bullet went through, and maybe the bone is broken."

"Too bad! tut! tut!" said his brother Zouave. "Never mind—I will bind it up in a moment. Do you think you can lean against that tree and keep from fainting until I run and see whether my little joker went in the right direction?"

"Nary faint!" said Crawford, making a strong effort to overcome the pain he was suffering. "Go ahead, Bob, and hurry!"

Webster did hurry, and Crawford had scarcely more than time to enjoy half-a-dozen exquisite throbs of agony and observe that the light through the trees, Northward, was growing brighter and brighter, when he came running back, very jubilant.

"Dead as the deadest kind of a herring!" he said. "Didn't hit him where I meant to, but it answered. Bored him right through the skull, and he lies there, hugging the root of the tree he was so fond of."

"Well, I am glad of that, at all events!" answered Crawford. Men, even of the best hearts and warmest natures, change terribly in times of war and among the influences of the camp and the battle-field. The man who by nature could only have said "Thank God!" at some benefit rendered to his kind or some dispensation of Providence by which the lives of his perilled fellow-men have been preserved—easily learns to be thankful for the explosion of a magazine or the sinking of a ship by which hundreds of men have been sent suddenly into eternity, those men being his enemies.

"But come—let us see what kind of a nick you have got!" said Webster, examining the arm with some skill once acquired in a doctor's shop to which run-over and fainted people were sometimes brought for sudden assistance. "No, the bones are not broken—all right! Here, let me bind it up with my handkerchief and put my scarf-belt around your neck for a sling." He proceeded to make these dispositions, with speed and dexterity, and in a moment after Crawford felt the sickening pain subsiding and the slight faintness leaving him.

"Humph! that is better—it scarcely hurts at all now," he said. "Thank you, Bob—or Doctor Bob, I ought to call you."

"Well, call me anything you like, except a coward or a humbug!" answered Webster. "And now, old fellow, think you are strong enough to get back to the Hill?"

"Yes, but I am not going there!" said John Crawford. "Don't you see how bright that fire through the trees is getting? In this hot weather nobody builds a camp-fire of that size, and I think there must be a house burning. If you say so, we will take a tour in that direction."

"Anywhere with you," said Webster. "But," he added, careful for his wounded companion though not for himself, "suppose it should be a burning house, with rebels around, and you with your lame arm."

"Oh, Bob, we'll take the chances," said the wounded Zouave. "My impression is that they have had enough of Little Mac for one day, and got out of this, and that you killed about the last one of them. At all events, we'll take the chances—come on!"

Bob Webster had been in the habit of following his file-leader, and he did so in this instance. The two struck across the woods in the direction of the fire, their path through the trees and under-growth being made an easy one by the light it cast. A few hundred yards brought them to the edge of the wood, at a narrow place where a spur of the Malvern Hill made a sudden curve Southward and broke into the timber. As they approached the edge of the clear space, they saw that a house was indeed on fire, the flames now licking through the roof and enveloping the chimneys, while all the lower portion seemed burned to a shell. The house, which stood at the foot of the hill, appeared to have been of fair size, and surrounded on three sides with carefully cultivated grounds, now marred and desolated alike by the foot of the invader and the defender.

Climbing a broken fence that lay between the wood and the cultivated ground, the two soldiers drew nearer to the burning house, which strangely enough showed no person moving around the flames, and no indication that it was not burning in utter loneliness. Such things as traps and decoys had been heard of by the comrades, however, as they had been heard of by every soldier subjected to the tricks of the Confederates; and they were not too certain that enemies might not lie concealed in the neighborhood, waiting to pick off any Union soldier discerned in the light of the fire. On this account, Webster, who had re-loaded his rifle, carried it ready for instant use, while Crawford carried his in the unwounded hand, at half-cock, and ready to make some kind of an attempt, in the event of danger, to use it as a pistol. These precautions seemed to be all superfluous, for as they came still nearer to the burning house, now almost ready to fall into a heap of blazing and smouldering ruins, no voice was heard and no sign of life was visible.

"Nobody there," said Webster.

"Nobody living, at least, in or about that shanty!" was the reply of Crawford. "The people are either burned, saved, or there have been none there."

"One of the three—yes—I should say so!" replied Webster to this self-evident proposition.

"And as there seems nothing to be done, in the way of putting out the fire, saving anybody or killing anybody, suppose we go back to the Hill?" said Crawford.

"Not yet," answered Webster. "We have not yet been on the other side of the house. Perhaps there may be outbuildings on that side, that have not yet taken fire; and if there is no one living in the house, there may be cattle or hogs roasting in the enclosures."

"Very well said, Bob," said Crawford. "Let us see the other side of the house." And the two soldiers advanced as near as was comfortable to the blazing building, for that purpose. It had not yet fallen, though every board had dropped away, and every timber was a thin line of fire, fast charring to coals. The house had evidently been that of a person of some condition, though of perhaps no remarkable wealth. It had been of two stories, with a piazza in front and a neat little yard showing a few flower-shrubs, a bordering of fruit-trees at the sides of the enclosure, and two medium-sized Lombardy poplar trees at the gate. No negro-quarter was visible, or any evidence that the "peculiar institution" had formed any part of the domestic policy of the occupants.

Just as the companions approached the gate and stood observing these particulars, the demon of fire obtained his last triumph over the material of the building. The snapping and crackling of the flames increased for a moment, and the forked tongues seemed licking closer and closer around the doomed pile; then there was a sudden change—the arched rafters sunk away—the slight shock disturbed what had yet remained of the frame-work—and the instant after, with a loud rumbling crash, the whole building went down into a heap of ruins, one high burst of flame shooting up skyward as a signal that the destruction had been accomplished, and showers of sparks following it, like a burst of fireworks at some grand celebration. With the fall, the broad light of the fire over the surrounding fields and on the neighboring woods died away, and there only remained a great heap of burning timbers, smouldering coals and embers, giving scarcely more light than an ordinary watch-fire.

But the peculiar interest of that scene did not die out with the fall of the building: on the contrary, it was at that moment that it began to assume proportions more easily recognized. For mingled with the crash of the fall there seemed to be the sharp, shrill, terrible scream of a human voice in agony; and the very instant after that scream was repeated, so distinctly that it drove the blood from the cheeks of both the soldiers at the gate.

"My God! did you hear that?" said Crawford.

"Didn't I!" answered Webster. "I wish I hadn't! Jack, do you know, there must have been somebody in the house after all, burning to death; and that scream, when the building fell, was the wind-up of a life!"

"It must have been so, and we have been standing here, doing nothing, when aid might have been given!" said Crawford, in self-reproach, and forgetting how little a man with one arm can do in the way of carrying out people from a burning building. "Yet no—stop! No, Bob, that scream was not the last of the person's life, for didn't you notice, we heard it twice, and the last time after the house had fallen in? After that house fell, no one inside of it ever screamed, and so—"

"And so," said Webster, interrupting, "there is somebody, not in the house, who screamed? That is what you mean, and by Jupiter, Jack, you are right!"

"Now we must look the other side of the house," said Crawford. "Some poor creature, badly burned, may have crawled out from the flames and be lying there in agony."

So there might have been, truly! And what a strange riddle is human nature, even on that other side—mercy! We but a little while ago considered the ease with which a man born with the warmest aspirations for human good, might become eager for the destruction of life, when that life belonged to a foeman: let the opposite spectacle be considered, of a man who had just been plunging into the thick of a hand-to-hand fight, estimating human heads as of no more value than cocoa-nuts, and human lives as something to be taken without a shudder or a pang of compunction,—a few minutes afterwards speaking of a "poor creature" whose life might be threatened by fire, and speaking of that "poor creature" with all the tenderness of a mother or a lover! And is this inconsistent? No—it is consistent to the last degree. The brave man is the pitiful man; and while he may consider a hecatomb necessary for a cause, he regards one life sacrificed unnecessarily, as murder. "Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm, is all unfit to live!" says one of the old poet-philosophers. And are worms therefore never to be trodden upon? Not so, by any means! The adverbial adjective "needlessly" explains the broad distinction. Not one worm, even the creeping, crawling and disgusting caterpillar, for cruelty or even for neglect: millions of worms, whether caterpillar or human worm of the dust, for a sacred cause and a great duty!

"Yes, come on around the house. The heat is not so great now, and we must see if there is anything living here," was the reply of Webster to the last suggestion of Crawford; and they at once followed the yard as closely round as the burning ruins would permit. They heard no repetition of the sound; nor could they see any sign of human life. Behind the house, hillward, stood a small barn and stables, while a wood-shed and some other small outbuildings stood on the eastern side of the enclosure. These had been nearly connected with the house by board fences, and in two places those fences had taken fire and threatened to carry the flames to the other buildings. But the evening had been calm, and the fire had not run many yards along the fences before it became extinguished for want of compelling wind and quick fuel.

A proposition from Webster that they should search the outbuildings for the source of the cry, was negatived by Crawford, who thought it very likely, after all his previous confidence, that some of the Confederate troops, who had certainly held the woods at one time during the day, might be located in the barn—not dangerous, perhaps, if undisturbed, but very likely to be troublesome if two soldiers, one with one arm and both on a very blind errand, should go stumbling about in the dark too miscellaneously.

"Well," said Webster, "no doubt you are right, Jack, as you almost always are. In that case we have nothing to do but to get back to camp and look a little more closely after that shivered arm of yours, for there is certainly no one near the edge of the fire."

"Hark!" said Crawford, as they started to retrace their stops around the house, and move away. They were within a few steps of what appeared to be a wood-shed, standing on the east side of the enclosure, and some forty or fifty feet from the house. "Hark!"

"Well, what is it? I heard nothing!" said Webster, who had been listening exclusively for another shriek.

"Well, I heard something, and it was a groan!" said Crawford.

"Oh Lord!" exclaimed the not-very-reverent Webster. "What next, I wonder? Awhile ago we had shrieks: now we have groans! I wonder if this place is haunted—just a little?"

"Hark! there it was again!" said Crawford. "It was a groan, and not very far from us, either!"

"In that case," said Webster, "as it is incumbent upon two members of the Advance Guard not to come all this distance for nothing, we shall be under the necessity of hunting out the groan. Ah!" and the speaker paused a moment. "By Jupiter it is a groan. I heard it myself that time. It is here, under this shed!"

The long legs of Webster at once made a movement in that direction, followed by the shorter and more symmetrical ones of Crawford. They reached the door of the wood-house, opening towards the burned mansion. The door was unclosed, and they could look within. Just as they reached the door both heard another groan—quite sufficient to satisfy them that they were not in error as to the place from which the sound had proceeded. A faint red light from the fallen embers of the burning house shone within the rough shed from the narrow door—scarce enough, at first, to make objects distinctly visible; but as they gazed the eyes grew accustomed to the dim light and they could distinctly trace what the building contained. They stepped slowly within, no motion from the occupants giving indication that their presence was known; and this is what they saw—dimly, but clearly enough for the purposes of recognition.

On a straw pallet lay an old man, thin-faced and hollow-eyed, his scanty white hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. But the old man was not the most singular or the most painful feature of this spectacle. Beside him on the ground, kneeling, and rocking backward and forward with that peculiar motion so indicative of intense and hopeless grief when used by some of the European peasantry, was a young girl—apparently very young, very small and very girlish, though there was something about her which even in that dim light gave the impression that she was not a little girl, but a woman.

So much the two soldiers saw, while neither of the occupants of the shed seemed to be aware of their presence; but Webster, an intensely practical man and more fertile in resources than overflowing with delicacy, was not quite satisfied with the view obtained, and instantly determined to improve it.

"Wait here—I am going for a light," he said, and stepping hastily from the door he ran to the burning embers of the house, caught the end of a piece of pine scantling of which the other was in full blaze, and in a moment more entered the door of the shed, his novel torch throwing an odd, ghastly light upon all the objects within the little building. Then and not till then did the intruders become aware that they stood face to face with one who was dying, in the old man on the pallet,—and with a woman of a rare and almost startling order of beauty, in the young girl who knelt beside him. Her form, as they could see, even in her kneeling position, was almost childish in the shortness of its stature and the petite mould of her limbs; and yet there was nothing thin or attenuated about her, and the epithet "fragile" could not have been applied to her with half the justice of that very opposite word, "willowy." Her face was infantile in the smallness of the features, in their perfect round, and in the expression of helpless placidity which seemed to lie upon it. But those features were yet classical in outline, and the mouth, especially, was very sweet and budding. The open eyes were blue as heaven; and the hair, of which there was a great wealth, loosed from all restraint and sweeping back on her shoulders, was of that delicate and almost impalpable blonde so seldom met (even among the English, who arrogate to themselves the purest blonde hair in the world) and so universally admired—nay, almost worshipped.

It is not to be supposed that so long a time was necessary for the two Zouaves to catch the particulars here set down, as would be indicated by the length of the description itself; and certainly no such length of time was allowed them without interruption. It was now evident that neither the dying man nor the young girl had before been aware of the entrance of the strangers; but as Webster entered with his torch of pine, the sudden light startled both. The old man's eyes did not unclose, but the young girl's looked around with a startled glance; she rose to her feet, clasped her hands imploringly, while so sad and beseeching an expression rested upon her face, that she might have been the discarded Peri pleading for her lost place in heaven,—and said:

"Go away, please! Grandfather is dying. Don't disturb him—please don't!"

"My poor girl, we do not mean to disturb him, or you," said Crawford, advancing a little way towards the side of the pallet, and throwing into his voice all its native sympathy and kindness. "We are friends."

"Marion, who is that?" asked the old man, feebly. He had before shown that his eyes were affected by the light, and made a motion to rise, which brought the young girl at once to her knees again beside him, with her hand and arm affectionately round his head.

"I do not know, grandpa! They are soldiers—two soldiers."

"Tell them to go away—ask them to go away, and let me die in peace!" said the old man, his voice still feeble, and his utterance difficult as before.

"I have asked them, grandpa, and they will not go," said the young girl, her tones, strangely enough, even in characterizing what she must have felt to be an outrage, expressing no feeling of anger, but soft and low as flute notes of the lower register.

"We do not wish to intrude. We will go away," said Crawford.

"Ah!" said the old man, a perceptible shadow passing over his face, "that was the voice of a gentleman! Ask him who he is, Marion. But he must be a rebel," and the old man went on, his voice falling still lower as if he was speaking to himself. "He must be a rebel, for McClellan has been beaten and driven back. They have been fighting all day, and I know the end—I know the end."

"We are not rebels," said Crawford, who had caught the last words, whether intended or not even for the granddaughter's ear. "I hope you will not fear us. I am John Crawford, private in Duryea's Zouaves, of McClellan's army; and this is Robert Webster, private in the same regiment."

"Union men? Men faithful to the country and the old flag?" asked the old man, a gleam of delight passing over his wasted features. "Here, quick, quick, Marion, raise me up."

The young girl tried to obey, but her scant strength was insufficient even to raise the thin form of the old man. Robert Webster stepped forward to assist her, and as the old man was raised knelt down behind and supported the head and upper body in a half-sitting position. Though the eyes had remained closed before, they opened now, to confront Crawford—poor old, dim, lack-lustre eyes, that yet seemed to have one burning spark in the centre.

"You say that you are a Union soldier. Will you swear it?" he asked, in the same low, solemn tones.

"I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God," said John Crawford, lifting his hand to heaven, remembering some portions of the oath so commonly administered in our courts of justice, and adding on some words not commonly used in the same connection, "that I am a true and loyal soldier in the service of the United States, and the enemy of all rebels and traitors! Amen!"

"Thank God!" said the old man, solemnly. "If I cannot die with the old flag over me, I can at least have the company of those who uphold it! Give me your hand. What!" as the young soldier came closer. "You are wounded. You have been in the battle to-day. You are defeated and a fugitive?"

"No!" said the Zouave, with a world of triumph in his tone, and giving his uninjured hand at the same time. "I am wounded, but McClellan and Fitz-John Porter have to-day flogged the rebels out of their boots at Malvern Hill, and the Union army is safe!'

"Thank God! oh, thank God!" said the old man, reverently. "Marion, lay me back, I am faint." He did not seem to be aware that Webster was assisting to hold him up, or that any one was in the place except Crawford and his granddaughter. His request was obeyed, and he was laid down again on the pallet; but the excitement of the last few minutes had perceptibly weakened him, and he was evidently failing fast. "Marion, it hurts me to talk—a little. Tell the gentleman, for he is a gentleman, I know—who we are and how we came to be here."

"This is my grandfather," the young girl said, still on her knees by the pallet, and evidencing in her calm and childlike tone no surprise at the request, and no agitation in relating what must have pained her so terribly under the circumstances. "His name is Chester Hobart. We belong to a good family, and they say that we are related to the English Earls of Buckinghamshire. My father was Charles Hampden Hobart. He was an officer in the navy, and was drowned when I was quite a little girl." Crawford did not notice, then, but remembered afterwards, that in this strange relation she said nothing of another parent who seemed likewise to be dead—her mother. "My grandfather and myself lived in the house, here. We had black servants, but they have all gone away. We did not have any negro quarter—the servants lived in one part of the house. My grandfather has been very ill—so ill that I thought he would die. He is very fond of the Union—I do not know anything about politics. He was better a little; but the house took fire awhile ago, and I could scarcely help him out. I got out the straw mattress and a sheet, and I could get out nothing more. I am afraid my poor grandfather is very ill, now; perhaps he is dying. I thought he was dying a little while ago, and I screamed—I could not help it. That is all, grandfather, is it not? oh, grandfather! grandfather!" and the poor girl, for the first time broken down, fell forward on the straw pallet, buried her face near the old man's head, and sobbed like an overtasked child.

"Poor girl!" said John Crawford. He did not mean to speak aloud, but he did so, and the dying man heard him.

"Young man," he said, "you took an oath just now. Will you take another, to make an old man die happier?"

"I will!" answered the young man, bending close to him. He was too much exhausted, now, to raise his head any more.

"You say that the Union troops have won the fight to-day?"

"I do say so. We have repulsed the rebel attacks every time; and the last repulse was a rout. They are defeated."

"You believe that you can reach the Union camp in safety?"

"I have no doubt of it," answered the Zouave.

"Then swear to me, with the same uplifted hand you used awhile ago, that you will remove my granddaughter, Marion Hobart, to the North—out of this den of secession. She has money in a Bank in New York, enough to make her comfortable—I put it there three years ago, thinking such a time as this might come. Swear to me that you will find her a home with some honest family, and that you will neither do harm to her yourself nor permit it to approach her if you can shelter her from it. Swear it by the Ever-Living God."

"I swear!" said the young soldier, lifting his hand solemnly.

The old man lay still on his pillow, a strange and awful shadow stealing over his face. His granddaughter had raised her head, and she saw it, though the torch had burned low and there was little but the red light of the fire glimmering into the building. She buried her face once more in the pallet, threw her arms around the old man's form, and sobbed,

"Grandfather! oh, grandfather!"

"Hark! did I not hear cannon again? Are you sure the Union troops have won the victory?" came from the closing lips. "You are a soldier and a gentleman. You said your name was Craw—Crawford. A good old name. Never mind me—take care of Marion. Marion—Ma—." He was silent, and silent forever, except as the dumb lips may be hereafter opened!

Marion Hobart saw the lower jaw fall and the open eyes put on that ghastly appearance which is the seal of the triumph of death: and she knew, without a word from either of her companions, that he was dead. The soldiers saw that she comprehended all that had occurred, and expected that she would shriek again and throw herself wildly on the body. She did not—she merely clasped her hands and looked on the body with such a pitiful gaze of fixed sorrow that Crawford could not bear it and turned away his eyes, while Webster found sudden and unexplained necessity for blowing his long nose.

Suddenly, and before a word had been spoken by either of the soldiers, a new thought came to the young girl and a terrible look of fear and sorrow swept over her face.

"It is night and we cannot bury him!" she said, her voice broken and agonized. "How can I leave him unburied? Gentlemen—gentlemen—how can I leave my poor grandfather unburied?"

"He shall not remain unburied!" said Crawford, instantly and earnestly.

"He should not, Miss, if I had to make a ground-hog of myself and dig his grave with my own hands!" put in Webster, who had scarcely spoken before during all the sad scene.

"Oh thank you!—thank you both!" she began—then suddenly pausing, she said: "But how—I do not understand—it is night, and we have nothing—"

"In half an hour we will be at camp, God willing," answered Crawford, "and Colonel Warren will send a guard of soldiers to watch the body until morning and then to bury it with all honor. Do you understand, Miss Hobart?"

"I do," answered the young girl, her sad calmness returning at once. "You are both very good and kind, and may God bless you. You want to go? We must go, I suppose; and we can do poor grandfather no good now by staying. Good-bye, grandfather—poor grandfather! I shall never see you again, and you do not see me, even now! Good-bye! oh, grandfather, grandfather! I am so lonesome I so lonesome!"

For one moment she threw herself forward on the pallet and embraced the body of the old man, in uncontrollable sorrow, while both the two Zouaves found themselves shedding tears very inappropriate for the evening of a day of battle. Then she rose to her feet, put her fingers to her eyes as if pressing out the moisture that had gathered unbidden under the lids, and said:

"Shall we go? I am ready."

Reverently, Crawford drew the sheet over the face of the corpse, hiding it forever from the eyes of the bereaved granddaughter as it was so soon to be hidden from the eyes of all the living; and then the doubly-orphaned girl and her new-found friends took their way from the scene of death. She was dressed only in light delaine and had neither shawl nor bonnet; but the night air was not too cool, and Webster wrapped his Zouave jacket around the slight form, while Crawford supplied her with his handkerchief as a covering for her head They took their way at once from the house, now little more than a heap of darkening coals,—and struck south-eastward over the spur of the hill and through that portion of the woods least likely to retain any ambushed rebels, towards the quarters on Malvern. The sounds of battle had almost entirely ceased, it being now some ten o'clock in the evening; and only occasionally the boom of a cannon half a mile away to the south-westward showed that the opposing forces yet remained near each other. The thick smoke which had shrouded all the country during the day, had almost all rolled away, the young moon had disappeared in the west, and the stars looked down as clearly and beautifully as if no such things as war and death could exist in a world gazed upon by such pure eyes.

Scarcely a word was spoken by either, during the short walk to the top of Malvern Hill. The young girl leaned upon the uninjured arm of John Crawford, with a touching confidence and trust, an occasional convulsion of grief shaking her frame and on occasional sob breaking from her; while Bob Webster acted as scout and guide, carrying both rifles, and perhaps not the more on that account prepared to repel any sudden danger. But no such danger came. The rebels had indeed retired, and the various corps of the Union army had been gathered in to their respective quarters, preparatory to the march to Harrison's Landing, which was to be pursued at daylight. Not all of them, however. It was well that the course of Crawford and his companions did not lie across Carter's Field; for if it had done so, they must have seen hundreds of lanterns moving about, and hundreds of dark figures moving and toiling—the fatigue-parties burying the Union dead and planting the soil of the Old Dominion with more of that martyr seed which may yet spring up to the redemption of the land and the glory of the nation. This would have been a sad and harrowing sight for the young girl, after so lately leaving her last relative to be made a prey for worms; and fortunately she was spared it.

Perhaps half an hour after leaving the burned house, the Zouaves and their charge reached the bivouac of the Advance Guard, half way down the slope towards Carter's Field. The loss of the corps had been but trifling, in spite of their furious charge; and though tired and hungry, those who had not dropped down in their places to sleep, were merry and jubilant. The Union forces had won one last great victory in defeat, and they knew it and knew that the army was safe. Crawford had ever been a favorite with his corps, respected by the men and even petted by the officers; and he was recognized with shouts of welcome by many, as he made his way, with his charge on his arm, towards the Colonel's tent.

"Hallo, old fellow! Safe eh, after all!" cried one who recognised him; while another said: "Thought you had gone to Richmond, without waiting for the rest of us!" and another, but in a lower tone that perhaps Marion Hobart did not hear: "I say, Jack, where the deuce did you pick up a petticoat, and a white one at that?"

Colonel Warren received the young Zouave, and heard his story, paying all respect to the young girl under his protection. He at once promised, at Crawford's request, that a file of soldiers should go down to the burned house and perform the rites of burial before the corps left the hill; whereupon the face of the young girl more fully repaid him by its expression of true gratitude, than did even her words of sad thankfulness. There are men who have called Colonel Warren not only a martinet but a man devoid of feeling: let his action on this occasion prove how little those know him who speak of him thus coldly.

"Some of the wagons are leaving for the Landing just now," he said to Crawford, after the latter had explained the nature of his wound and briefly told the story of the protection he had promised the young girl, which he would have no difficulty in finding for her in the company of his brother and sister. "Some of the wagons are going down now. You are of no use here, and you had as well take the lady down at once. Make her as comfortable as you can in one of the wagons. The ride is only a short one; and perhaps you may be able to find a berth for her on board one of the boats at the Landing. Stay, Crawford, a despatch-boat will be going down to Monroe in the morning. You are a faithful fellow and a good soldier. I will see to it, in the morning, that you have a furlough for a month. I think we shall do nothing more for a month, and you may need that time to get a new arm. Take Miss Hobart at once to New York, and place her with your sister. That is all—now look for a place in one of the wagons. Good night—I will see about the rest before the boat leaves."

Crawford's warm "God bless you, Colonel!" was more softly, but not less earnestly echoed by the "I thank you, sir, very much. You are very good and kind!" of the young girl; and the two left the tent to follow out the directions of the officer. Bob Webster, unwounded, was already with his companions, picking up what he could find left in the way of rations, and telling over, for the sixth time already, the adventures of the night.

Not to linger upon what no longer needs particular description, let it be said in a word that Crawford succeeded in securing transportation for the young girl and himself to Harrison's Landing; that they reached that return terminus of the campaign against Richmond, a little after midnight; that a place was found on board one of the boats at the Landing, for Miss Hobart, under the kind care of the colored chambermaid; that Colonel Warren kept his promise and procured the wounded Zouave, (whose arm had been examined by one of the surgeons, and found to be badly torn and lacerated, though none of the bones were broken), his furlough for a month "or until recovered;" that they went down the next day on the despatch boat to Fortress Monroe, whence General Wool at once sent them on to Washington; and that on the evening of the Fourth of July they reached the city of New York, and John Crawford had the pleasure of placing his sacred charge under the protection of his brother, whom he found yet so sadly an invalid,—and of his sister, who received her with a warmer and more considerate kindness than he had ever before known her to exhibit towards any living object.



CHAPTER XX.

JUDGE OWEN AND HIS DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE—TWO CRIMINALS AT THE BAR, WITH A SPECIAL EDICT FOLLOWING—A ROW AT WALLACK'S, AND ONE MORE RECOGNITION.

It has again been unavoidable, in following the fortunes of other characters connected with this narration, to lose sight of those who have prominently figured in the mansion of Judge Owen—the Judge himself, his wife, his daughter Emily, Aunt Martha, and the two lovers who fought over that very pretty little bone as if they had been dogs and she a tit-bit of very different description. But it is one of the first principles of conducting the successful march of an army, that no stragglers should be allowed to lag too far behind, lest a sudden onslaught upon them might cause a panic extending to all the other portions of the force. Let the Judge and his family, then, be kept up as nearly as possible to the march of the main body; and especially let not pretty Emily Owen and her mischievous printer-lover be lost from the ranks by any contingency.

Aunt Martha saw farther into futurity than her niece, when she decided that the row between Frank Wallace and Colonel John Boadley Bancker, if it came to the Judge's ears, would be likely to make affairs much worse instead of better; and Emily and she had some serious conversation over the prospect, that night of the street accident, after both the rivals had gone,—which did not tend to make the young girl go to her white pillow with the most blissful of anticipations. The younger lady thought it doubtful whether the matter need come to the knowledge of her father at all, as she did not believe that the Colonel would so far bemean himself as to make a complaint to the father of the young girl he was pursuing, of the advantages which another suitor might possess over him in the mind of the girl herself. Aunt Martha, who had seen somewhat more than her niece of the world and its meanness, did not consider the Colonel too proud to take such a course, if he believed himself likely to gain by it; and besides—she remembered, what her niece did not, that they were by no means alone in the house when the little affair occurred. Servants—those important personages, who in modern days keep the houses and permit their masters and mistresses, on the payment of a round sum per week, to live in the house with them—those ubiquitous personages, who seem to have the faculty of being precisely where they are not wanted, when any family trouble is to be ventilated,—servants were in the house at the time, and there was no guaranty whatever that they had not been sufficiently near to hear every awkward word that had been spoken.

The good Aunt felt that she had the more cause to be apprehensive in the latter direction, from some observations that she had accidentally made a few weeks before. Not long after the coming into the house of Miss Hetty, cook and kitchen girl, (she is certainly entitled to the prefix of "Miss," at least once, from the fact of her holding her head a little higher than any member of the family) a little after her advent, we say, Aunt Martha happened one evening to pass through the lower hall, in list slippers, and accidentally became aware that two persons were talking in a very low tone, just within the door of the dining-room. Perhaps it may have been accidentally, but possibly on purpose, that she took one glance through the crack of the door, herself unobserved, and noticed that the talkers were Judge Owen and Hetty. The tone was certainly confidential, and the two stood very near together. Had Mrs. Martha West not been aware of certain points in her brother's character which would make a criminal flirtation with a servant-girl in his own house impossible, she might have drawn the conclusion that some impropriety of that kind was on foot. As it was, she became satisfied that some of her previous suspicions were correct, and that Judge Owen, who habitually went to the intelligence-offices and selected the servants when any change became necessary, was capable of the ineffable meanness of bribing his domestics to play the spy on his own household and detail all the occurrences to him! Where the estimable man had picked up that particular meanness, she had no idea, nor is this a place in which to hazard a suggestion. If it was so, it might be suggested that the practice of hearing and allowing weight to spy testimony, caught through key-holes and the cracks of doors, or picked up by lounging at people's elbows on sidewalks and in bar-rooms, had possibly some connection with the application of the same system to his own household.

Perhaps there may be persons upright and straight-forward enough themselves, and unsuspicious enough of the vices and meannesses of others, to doubt whether such things as those just hinted at, exist in the great city. To such it might not be amiss to say, that there are operations of this character, in what is called "respectable society," so much worse than the mere procured espionage of servants, that they make that atrocity almost endurable. Fancy the husband of a second wife keeping his eldest daughter by a former marriage, herself a married woman, in the same house with his wife, with orders to keep that wife constantly in view, to watch her when she receives company, dog her when she goes out, and dole out to her the necessaries for the family from closets, chests and cupboards of which she [the daughter] keeps the keys! Fancy these things, and the wife submitting to them, perforce! And then understand, what is the humiliating truth, that the lady subjected to these practices is a most beautiful and accomplished favorite, delighting thousands by her public appearances, envied by all, and supposed to be rolling in wealth and revelling in comfort!

Not long ago there was a story going the rounds of the press, of some spicy sporting operations in England, in which one trainer and jockey threw one of his creatures, in the disguise of a stable-boy, into the stables of another, to watch the appearance and action of his horses, to overhear what he could of the conversation of the trainer, to discover for what cups and matches they were about to be entered, and to make weekly reports to him, through letters pretendedly addressed to the boy's "mother," so that he could take advantage of the knowledge so unfairly attained, in making up his betting-book. By a mere accident the trainer discovered what kind of an emissary of the enemy was quartered in his stables, and instead of kicking him out he merely gave him plenty to report. He managed to have the boy overhear all sorts of manufactured conversations, rode his horses unfairly on the training-course, stuffed him with false reports of the matches for which they were entered, and, in short, gave him such budgets to send home to his master, that the latter grew completely mystified, bet on the losing chances instead of the winning ones, and lost about twenty thousand pounds, which went into the pocket of the intended victim. The story is a good one, and for the honor of humanity ought to be true.

Not many years ago a jealous old husband in this city, who had fallen into the misfortune of a young and handsome wife, grew jealous of her without the least cause, and descended to the execrable meanness of putting one of the chamber-maids under pay to play the detective and report to him what letters her mistress received and all the "goings on" in the house. Biddy was not quite keen enough for her new position, and the bright eyes of the young wife were not long in discovering that she was watched and dogged! What did the outraged wife? Send the vixen packing, bag and baggage, with a boxed ear for a parting present, as she might have done with all propriety? Not at all—she retained her and kept her own discovery a secret, merely adopting the same plan as our friend the trainer, and giving her something to tell. The wife fortunately had half a dozen male cousins, living at a distance, and as many female friends, living near. Between these two corps of assistants she managed to receive such letters, accidentally dropped for the servant-girl to finger, and received such clandestine visits when her husband was absent and at suspicious hours, as left no doubt whatever in the mind of a reasonable man like the husband, that she must be terribly false to her marital vows. The catastrophe of all this need not be given: it was final enough, in all conscience, and sent the husband down town one day with a dim consciousness that he had made himself the greatest fool since Adam, and that an early burial would not be so great a calamity after all!

Unfortunately Judge Owen, of this writing, had no such sharp-witted and reckless opponent, and his meanness was left to work itself out in a natural manner. Aunt Martha's apprehensions were not idle, as was proved very soon after. The Judge and his wife returned from their little trip up the Hudson, on the second day after their departure; and within three hours after their arrival, before the Judge had been absent from the house a moment and before Colonel Boadley Bancker could by any means have managed to see him, the storm of paternal wrath and indignation burst on the devoted heads for which it was intended.

The gas had just been lighted on the floor below, and Aunt Martha and Emily were seated enjoying the summer twilight in the front-room of the latter, up-stairs, when the stentorian voice of the Judge was heard bawling from the hall:

"Martha—Emily—come down here a moment!"

"There it is! there is trouble ahead! I knew it!" said Aunt Martha.

"He cannot have heard anything about it, yet," said the niece.

"He has, I am sure of it!" answered the Aunt. "We may as well go down and take the thunder-storm, at once, as have it hanging over us for a month."

"Oh, Aunt, I cannot endure to have Papa scold, when he is in one of his terrible humors," said the frightened girl. "I have done nothing, that I know of; but you don't know what rough words he says to me sometimes, and I have been almost afraid that he would strike me with that heavy hand! I believe I should die if he did."

"No, child, you would not die, I think," said the more practical Aunt, "but something might occur for which your father would one day be quite as sorry—your last particle of love and respect for him might die, and that would be sadder than the death of many bodies. But come, Emily; we shall be called again in a moment."

Aunt and niece descended the stairs to the parlor, the latter trembling like a leaf in the wind and the former in a strange flutter that was part trepidation and part indignation. They found affairs in the parlor in a very promising condition, as the aunt had suspected. Judge Owen was too angry to sit in his large chair, as he would have liked to do, and receive the culprits with judicial dignity. He was walking the floor, with his hands behind his back and every indication of very stormy weather on his countenance. He looked bigger and more burly than ever, and less than ever like what the brother and father should have been, to the two who entered. Mrs. Owen sat in a rocking-chair, swaying backward and forward, with her hand to her eyes and very much the appearance of a whipped child who had been set down in that chair with orders to be "good." It was not supposable that the Judge had been whipping her, physically; but he had unquestionably been "getting his hand in" for the exercise that was to come, by reading her a severe lecture upon everything that she had done and everything she had not done, since the day they were married.

"So then!" he broke out, the moment the culprits appeared in view. "This is the kind of order you keep in my house—my house!" and he emphasized the possessive pronoun so severely that the poor little word must have had a hard time of it among his strong front teeth.

Emily, as yet, replied nothing. But Aunt Martha said:

"Well really, brother, I do not see that the house is in very bad order! Perhaps that rocker is a little out of place, and the etagere—"

"D—n it, woman, I am not talking of the furniture, and you know it!" thundered the Judge.

"William Owen!" said Aunt Martha, who had not gone through fifty or a hundred such conflicts without deriving some controversial profit from them—"I do not choose to be sworn at, in your house or the house of any other man. If you were a gentleman, you would not be guilty of the outrage."

Emily trembled. Here was Jupiter plucked by the beard, and called hard names to his face, by one of the mere underlings of his dominions! William Owen not a gentleman! Judge Owen not a gentleman! Could human presumption go farther? What would be the end of this?

"I will swear as I like, and when I like!" said the Judge, after a pause of an instant. But he did not swear again immediately, and not at all again at his sister, during the whole interview, it was noticeable. Brutality is not best met by brutality; but it is a mistake to suppose that it is best met by abject submission. What it needs, as its master and corrective, is dignified firmness.

"So this is the way, is it," the Judge went on. "The moment my back is turned, my house is full of low characters, and quarrelling and fighting become the order of the day."

"When did all this occur?" asked Aunt Martha, innocently.

"The very evening I left!" thundered the Judge.

"And how have you found it all out, so soon?" queried his sister, looking him very calmly in the eyes.

It may be a libel, for which an action would lie, to say that Judge Owen blushed at this home-thrust. He certainly reddened, but that may have been with anger—not shame.

"How do I know it? What business is that of yours, woman? It is enough to say that I do know it, and that I will break all that sort of thing up, or I will break half a dozen heads!" This was a favorite simile of the Judge's, because it brought in the word "break" twice, in such an effective manner. "Well, Miss Emily Owen, what have you to say to all this?" It may be libel, again, to say that the Judge was sheering off his vessel from a battery that worried him, to engage one that seemed comparatively helpless; but really the whole thing bore that appearance.

"I, father? I have nothing to say," returned the daughter, "and for that reason I have not said anything."

"You do not deny, then," thundered the Judge, his voice rising higher because he had a younger, lower-voiced and less formidable antagonist, "that on the very night I went away there was low company in this house, and that—"

Perhaps Emily Owen had never presumed to interrupt her father half a dozen times during her life, but we have before seen that she could do so, even wickedly, when fully aroused, and the temptation to do so in the present instance was overpowering. Besides, she had just caught a lesson from her aunt, in the "womanly art of self-defence," the muscular development for which lies in the tongue.

"Do you call Colonel Bancker low company, father?"

"Colonel Bancker? No, girl! Colonel Bancker is a gentleman and a soldier," replied the Judge. "I am speaking of that low, contemptible scoundrel, Wallace."

"And he has been in the habit of coming here with your consent, papa," answered the daughter, "and so I do not know how we were to blame for receiving the visits of people when you were gone, whom you were in the habit of receiving when you were at home."

"Hush, child! Hush, Emily!" Mrs. Owen felt it necessary to say at this moment. She had not before spoken a word, but she may have felt that that incarnation of reason and dignity, her husband, was "taking damage" at the hands of very ordinary mortals. "Hush, child—do not bandy words with your father."

"No, miss, do not bandy words with me!" roared the Judge, put exactly upon the right track, from which he had before strayed a little, by the words of his wife. "I am master in this house, as I mean to let you know!" Humble Judge!—he had let them know it, long before, quite as much as lay in his power. "I will not allow myself to be run over in this manner, any longer!" Ponderous and self-sacrificing Judge!—apart from the fact that no one in that house had ever tried the experiment, what a vehicle it would have been that could "run over" that man without danger from the encounter! And now gathering strength and force as well as anger, as he rolled down the mountain of denunciation, he went on: "I have called you down, both of you, and you especially, Emily, to make a final settlement with you! I have told you before that you should marry Colonel John Boadley Bancker, and I need not tell you again, for by G—you shall! And now I tell you something more. If you ever permit that d—d low-lived, miserable, contemptible puppy, whom you call Frank Wallace, to cross the door-step of this house again, I will break every bone in his infernal carcase; and when he goes into the street, you go with him! Do you hear?"

"Yes, father, I hear," said his daughter.

"Yes, we both hear, as I suppose you intended it for both of us," said his sister.

"I intended it for everybody!" roared the Judge. "Now let us see whether you obey or not! Come, Mrs. Owen, is supper ready?"

Probably the Judge supposed that he had supplied both the others with quite as much supper as they needed, as he did not extend the invitation to either. He certainly had done so: they were both "full," in one sense of the word if not in the other. His daughter was "full" of trouble and anxiety; and Aunt Martha was "full" of a more dangerous feeling—outraged pride and indignation.

"Poor Frank!—he cannot come to the house any more!" said the young girl, when they had left the parlor. "What shall I do? Aunt—Aunt—don't scold me, but I love him. That is the truth; and don't you scold me, but help me if you can."

"Until this hour, Emily," said the aunt, gravely, and taking the hand of her niece kindly in her own, "I had simply been determined that you should not be forced into a marriage with Colonel Bancker, if I could prevent it. Within this half hour I have made up my mind to go farther. I know that you love Frank Wallace; I believe him to be a good man, and I know him to be a brave one; and now you shall marry him, if any aid I can offer will help you to that end!"

"Aunt! Aunt! dear, good, kind Aunt!" cried the young girl, throwing herself into the widow's arms and giving her such a hug and such a storm of kisses as would have made Frank Wallace whistle "Hail Columbia" and "Abraham's Daughter" for forty-eight hours in succession.

Such was the radical effect, towards carrying out his determination in regard to each of the two rivals, produced by Judge Owen's ultimatum. He was not the first man, and he probably will not be the last, to pour the drop too much into the bucket of endurance and add that last feather to the load which weighs down the camel of patience. Something more of the "effect" will be seen in this immediate connection.

Judge Owen had occasion to attend a political caucus, at one of the down-town hotels, early in the evening of the second day from that on which the collision with his sister and daughter had occurred; and he consequently did not go home to dinner when his court adjourned. He dined at the hotel where the caucus took place, and afterwards strolled up Broadway, airing his portly figure, and intending to take the Third-Avenue cars at Astor Place or Fourteenth Street. When he came opposite Wallack's Theatre, at about nine o'clock, the lights shone brightly before the door, the placards announcing the "Returned Volunteer" and "Mischievous Annie" looked tempting, and as Judge Owen had an eye for the drama and was officially marked "D.H." on the book at the gate, he concluded to see the balance of the performance.

He passed in. Florence was just indulging in that terrible war-dance of jealousy which follows the supposed discovery of the fact that the wife of Bill Williams has taken up with a Picaninny, and the laughter and applause were uproarious. The Judge found some acquaintances in the lobby, and chatted with them while he watched the piece and while waiting for the next.

Finally another friend, a family acquaintance, came up the aisle, from the orchestra-seats, probably on his way to those pleasant lower regions in which refreshment to the inner man is dispensed. As he shook hands with the Judge, he said:

"Ah, Judge, I did not know that you were here. I saw your daughter, just now, down in the orchestra, but I am sure she did not come in with you."

"My daughter!" said the Judge, surprised, "I think you must be mistaken. Mrs. Owen did not speak of coming to the theatre this evening."

"Oh," said the acquaintance, "Mrs. Owen is not here. I should have seen her if she had been. Your daughter came in with a young man, and they are sitting together down there in the second row from the front."

"You do not know the young man?" asked the Judge, on whom the compound noun for some cause produced an unpleasant effect.

"No," answered the acquaintance, "I do not know him. He is a rather good-looking young fellow, short, with brown curly hair, and a moustache, and dressed in light-gray. No doubt you know him by the description."

Judge Owen did know him by the description, but too well! That short good-looking young man with the curly hair, the moustache and the light-gray clothes, was as certainly the man he had forbidden his house and the company of his daughter, as his own name was Owen and his dignity a judicial one!

Here was an outrage!—witness it ye fathers whose daughters do not always obey your high behests. Here was a call for the exercise of the highest qualities of authority!—bear witness to that, all you good people who have at one time or another dragged your wives out of churches because you did not like the ritual, or who have dragged them into churches because suitors armed with money-bags or aristocratic names or political influence, stood within and beckoned! Here was a necessity for proving what Judge Owen had only a day or two before so loudly asserted—his ascendency in his own household. Here was an opportunity to show to the public that Judge Owen, arbiter of the legal destinies of his fellow-men when they did not range beyond a certain insignificant number of dollars, was at once a Solon and a Draco in his own domestic relations. Great men will develope themselves at some period or other in their lives, however they may previously have been kept back by adverse circumstances; and Judge Owen had never yet enjoyed the opportunity of showing half his mighty energies. Armed with the double power of a parent and the law, he felt that he could combat anything—even a young and delicate woman: gifted with a rigid sense of right which rose above all personal considerations, he felt that to that right he could sacrifice anything—even the privacy and sanctity of his domestic relations.

The great men of old had done something in that way: Brutus had laid his son, without a tear or a groan, on the altar of his country; Virginius had slain his daughter when her perilled honor demanded that violent deed; and only half a century before his own time, Napoleon had given up a beloved Empress and married a royal nobody, for the sake of preserving the dynasty that his people so demanded. It only remained for William Owen, Judge, to emulate those great examples and drag his daughter out of the theatre!

It may have been that Judge Owen did not think of quite all those great examples, as he walked broadly and pompously down the aisle, disturbing the audience just when the curtain was rising on the second piece; but he certainly bore himself as if he remembered all of them and a few hundreds more. Anxious spectators looked at him as he came down, speculating painfully whether he was likely to take his seat in front of them, and calculating what would be their chances of seeing in that event. But the Judge was not going to sit down—no! At the gate he encountered a momentary obstruction, in the shape of the usher who looked after the orchestra tickets; but he swept him away as a spring freshet might carry away a bundle of obstructing sedge, by a majestic wave of the hand and the information that he was merely going down there for a moment on business.

Then he strode on down the aisle, unobserved as yet by the lovers, who sat in the seat next the front and within three or four places of the end of the row, enjoying the dramatic entertainment and each others' company about equally. Perhaps they sat a very little closer together than they might have done had there been no parental objection in the way; and under the folds of Emily's dark mantilla, which lay upon her lap, there may have been two hands clasped together. Let the young and the loving, whose province it is to make such follies half the material of their lives, decide whether affairs were likely to be exactly in the shape suggested,—as also, whether at any time during the evening, when it had become necessary for Frank Wallace to make a remark to his companion, he had or had not leaned down his lips so close to her ear as almost to kiss its pink pendant.

The first intimation had by the absorbed lovers that the paternal bomb was bursting in the neighborhood, was conveyed by the Judge halting at the end of their row, leaning over the two or three people between, without any apology, stretching out his arm, and saying in his loud, coarse voice:

"Miss Emily Owen, you are wanted at home."

The blood flew to the face of the young girl in an instant, though it was the blood of anxiety and not of shame, and she asked:

"Is any one ill—hurt?—My mother—"

"Your mother is well, and there is no one sick at home," said the Judge, determined that his lesson to his daughter should not be balked by any one of the audience thinking him less a brute than he was. "But I find you here in improper company and against my orders; and I command you to leave that man and come home with me instantly."

Decided sensation in the orchestra-seats, and even on the stage, where Mrs. Florence paused in the middle of one of her most effective Yankeeisms, to know what caused the interruption. Sensation in a good many fingers, that they would like to be applied violently to the ears of the man who could speak in that manner to so sweet-looking a girl, no matter under what provocation. A few hisses and cries of "Hush-h-h!" "Hush-h-h!" Poor Emily had sunk back in her chair, the moment her anxiety was relieved by mortification, merely saying in a pleading voice, as if to disarm her tyrant:

"Oh, father!"

Frank Wallace, meanwhile, had sprung to his feet, the moment the opprobrious epithet was applied to him; and though he distinctly saw that the intruder was the puissant Judge Owen, Emily's father, and large enough, physically, to eat him for lunch—he was on the point of springing across the intervening space and giving him a taste of his gymnastic quality. This would have been terribly improper, no doubt, towards a man much older than himself, and the father of the girl he yet hoped one day to make his wife; but the spectators, had he done so, and could they have known all the facts of the case, would have been much more likely to forgive him than the miserable hound (now a miserable secessionist—thank Heaven for his choice!) who bore a military title to his name, a few years ago, and sat still in one of the theatres of this city, without daring to lift a hand in opposition, while the just-married wife by his side was brutally caned by her millionaire father for daring to marry him! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as an excrescence from God's footstool.