Here, weaving the union of cities, With hoar wakes belting the blue, From slip to slip, past schooner and ship, The ferry's shuttles flew:— Now, loosed from its stall, on the yielding wall The steamboat paws and rears; The citizens pass on a pavement of glass, And climb the frosted piers.

Where, in the November twilight, To the ribs of the skeleton bark That stranded lay in the bend of the bay, Motionless, low, and dark, Came ever three shags, like three lone hags, And sat o'er the troubled water, Each nursing apart her shrivelled heart, With her mantle wrapped about her,—

Now over the ancient timbers Is built a magic deck; Children run out with laughter and shout And dance around the wreck; The fisherman near his long eel-spear Thrusts in through the ice, or stands With fingers on lips, and now and then whips His sides with mittened hands.

Alone and pensive I wander Far out from the city-wharf To the buoy below in its cap of snow, Low stooping like a dwarf; In the fading ray of the dull, brief day I wander and muse apart,— For this frozen sea is a symbol to me Of many a human heart.

I think of the hopes deep sunken Like anchors under the ice,— Of souls that wait for Love's sweet freight And the spices of Paradise: Far off their barks are tossing On the billows of unrest, And enter not in, for the hardness and sin That close the secret breast.

I linger, until, at evening, The town-roofs, towering high, Uprear in the dimness their tall, dark chimneys, Indenting the sunset sky, And the pendent spear on the edge of the pier Signals my homeward way, As it gleams through the dusk like a walrus's tusk On the floes of a polar bay.

Then I think of the desolate households On which the day shuts down,— What misery hides in the darkened tides Of life in yonder town! I think of the lonely poet In his hours of coldness and pain, His fancies full-freighted, like lighters belated, All frozen within his brain.

And I hearken to the moanings That come from the burdened bay: As a camel, that kneels for his lading, reels, And cannot bear it away, The mighty load is slowly Upheaved with struggle and pain From centre to side, then the groaning tide Sinks heavily down again.

So day and night you may hear it Panting beneath its pack, Till sailor and saw, till south wind and thaw, Unbind it from its back. O Sun! will thy beam ever gladden the stream And bid its burden depart? O Life! all in vain do we strive with the chain That fetters and chills the heart?

Already in vision prophetic On yonder height I stand: The gulls are gay upon the bay, The swallows on the land;— 'Tis spring-time now; like an aspen-bough Shaken across the sky, In the silvery light with twinkling flight The rustling plovers fly.

Aloft in the sunlit cordage Behold the climbing tar, With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide, Climbing a shadow-spar! Up the glassy stream with issuing steam The cutter crawls again, All winged with cloud and buzzing loud, Like a bee upon the pane.

The brigantine is bringing Her cargo to the quay, The sloop flits by like a butterfly, The schooner skims the sea. O young heart's trust, beneath the crust Of a chilling world congealed! O love, whose flow the winter of woe With its icy hand hath sealed!

Learn patience from the lesson! Though the night be drear and long, To the darkest sorrow there comes a morrow, A right to every wrong. And as, when, having run his low course, the red Sun Comes charging gayly up here, The white shield of Winter shall shiver and splinter At the touch of his golden spear,—

Then rushing under the bridges, And crushing among the piles, In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes, Like seaward-floating isles;— So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn In trappings of gold and blue, The world shall pass like a shattered glass, And the Heaven of Love shine through.



AT ANDERSONVILLE.

Drake Talcott, a Union prisoner, marched with other prisoners seventy-five miles to Danville, on thirteen crackers. They travelled from there to Andersonville, six days by rail, on four crackers a day, and, as a consequence of the rations, came in due course of time to a general sense of emptiness, and an incorrigible tendency to think of roast beef, boiled chicken, fried oysters, and other like dainties; and many of the prisoners, after battling awhile with the emptiness and the mental tendency, fell down exhausted, and were stowed away in the wagons following on in the rear of the train. But Talcott, though with youth and the brawn and muscle and lusty craving vitality of an athlete against him in the cracker point of view, possessed likewise a mighty will, and a stubborn, tenacious endurance, nowise weakened by the discipline of two years of camp and battle; and not only marched with courage and elasticity, but actually set himself, out of the abundance of his resources, to spur the flagging spirits of his comrades, as they huddled in disconsolate confusion about the little station at Andersonville.

"Boys," said our orator, "the Rebels keep their best generals for their Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and Grumble,—especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the three, because he comes under our own colors, and we feel shy about firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that muscles are the vital forces, and that man lives by beef; but, boys, muscles are only hammers, and it takes a thought to raise them; and though beef is good eating, and we should all like a slice uncommonly, let me tell you, when it isn't to be had, that backbone is the next thing to it, and it is surprising how long a man can live on it. For it is the brain that is the commander-in-chief, and does the strategy and the planning for this precious life that we all set such store by,—the brain, that I used to think a lazy bummer, that lived at the stomach's expense; and when the quartermaster—that's the stomach—telegraphs up that he's fairly cleaned out, not a half-ration left, says our little commander, cool and calm, 'Serve out grit and backbone to the troops, and send out the senses on a scout.' And, men, if you've got the grit, and keep on the sharp look-out, you are likely to get on; but shut down on grumbling,—that's a luxury for fellows that get three meals a day; for while you are busy about that, Starvation and Wear-'em-out will sail in at you, and once you get weak in the knees, and limp in the back, and dizzy in the head, you're played out. Remember, we aren't going to Belle Isle. I don't know anything about Andersonville, but it can't be so bad as that hole."

The men cheered. Up came an officer on the double-quick.

"What's the row about now? You Yankees are always chattering like crows."

"So you scarecrows come to look after us," retorted Drake, quick as light: at which poor piece of wit the soldiers were pleased to laugh vociferously,—the irritating laugh that assumes your defeat, without granting you a hearing,—before which the man in authority, not having the art of looking like a fool with propriety, retreated, reddening and snarling, but turned on the platform of the cars, and flung back this Parthian arrow at the laughing Yankees:—

"You're a bad lot of men, saucy as the Devil; but I reckon you'll get the impudence taken out of you here, d——d quick!"

"It is all you have left them to take, anyhow," said a voice,—and "That's so," chorused the crowd; and the whistle sounding, the Captain, whose reign was over, departed, hard-hit and growling, but left, so to speak, his sting behind him: for the last of his speech had one terrible merit,—it was true.

The prisoners, over a thousand strong, were formed in line and ordered to march. As they tramped along the dusty road, they strained their eyes, eagerly, but furtively, for the first show of their prison. Seeing tents on the left, there was a little stir among them, but that proved to be a Rebel camp; then some one spied heights topped with cannon, and "Now," said they, "we are close upon it," and then stopped short for wonder, for here the road ended, ran butt against the wall of a huge roofless inclosure, made of squared pines set perpendicularly and close together in the ground.

"Is it a pen?" asked one, doubtfully.

"Yes, yours," retorted one of the guard, with a grin,—"the Stockade Prison."

The word ran down the line like a shiver, and the men stood mute, eying each other doubtfully. And now, if I could, I would get at your hearts, you who read this, and you should not read mistily, and hold the story at loose ends as it were, but feel by the answering throb within yourselves what thoughts gnawed at the hearts of these men under their brave show of indifference: for though these be facts, facts written are disembodied, and, like spirits, have no power to speak to you, unless you give them the voice of your sympathy; and without that, I question which touches you most deeply, a thousand rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wondering, as he neared the wharves, where the Deuse they were going, or the thousand Union soldiers standing stunned before a gate from which should have wailed forth, as they filed through, "Leave all hope behind!"

They were hardly in, when there was a scramble, and a cry of "Rations!" and came lumbering a train of wagons, bringing the day's supplies. There were at this time under torture twenty-eight thousand prisoners,—more than the population of Hartford; and as the Southern Confederacy, a Christian association, and conducting itself with many appeals to Christian principle, believes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and so shears the Yankees as close as possible, these men had all been formally fleeced of such worldly gear as blankets, money, and extra clothing. Some further shearing there had been also, but irregular, depending chiefly on the temper of the captors,—stripping them sometimes to shirt and drawers, leaving them occasionally jacket and shoes; so now most were barefooted, most in rags, and some had not even rags. They had lain on the bare earth, sodden with damp or calcined into dust, and borne storm and heat helplessly, without even the shelter of a board, till they were burned and wasted to the likeness of haggard ghosts; most had forgotten hope, many decency; some were dying, and crawled over the ground with a woful persistency that it would have broken your heart to see; they were all fasting, for the day's rations, tossed to them the afternoon before, had been devoured, as was the custom, at a single meal, and proved scant at that; and they crowded wolfishly about the wagons, the most miserable, pitiable mob that ever had mothers, wives, and sisters at home to pray for them.

The new comers looked on amazed, and "How about Belle Isle now?" they said bitterly to Drake. He, poor fellow, was having his first despondent chill, and sneering at himself for having it, after all his fine talk about "backbone"; and finding reasons for despair thicken, the harder he tried to make elbow-room for hope, till altogether confounded at the muddle, he flung up thought, with "Brain's full and stomach's empty, and it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting," and set about cooking his rations. "But first catch your hare," cries Mrs. Glass. Drake had his hare, such as it was, but found something quite as important lacking,—wood.

"I say, my friend, where do we find fuel?" he asked of a man sitting quietly on the ground.

"Where the Israelites found the straw for their bricks," was the answer. "There is no special provision made, unless it be an occasional permit to forage outside, under——Hold off there!—don't touch that, man, unless you want to be cooked yourself for supper!—that's the 'dead line'!"

Drake drew back from a light railing running parallel with the inclosure, on which he had nearly laid his hand.

"What the Deuse is the dead line?"

"The new way to pay old debts, and put a Yankee out of the world cheap. Show so much as your little finger outside of that, and the guard nails you with a bullet; and as they like that sort of thing, they blaze away whenever they get a chance,—which is once or twice a day,—for our men expose themselves voluntarily. When Satan said, 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life,' he hadn't invented the Stockade Prison."

The man who said these things, in a quiet, unexcited way, as if discussing some abstraction of the schools, not murder, was too wan and wasted, too shrunken and despairing, to afford a guess as to what manner of man he might have been, and too unkempt and ragged for any inference concerning his rank, having neither jacket, cap, nor shoes, matted hair and beard, torn shirt and ragged trousers: but his look of resolved patience, and an occasional smile while he talked, sadder than tears, made Drake's stout heart twinge with pain. "A strong soul in a feeble body," he said to himself, as he walked on; and furthermore, "The man that can smile here like that is near heaven, and fit for it."

Presently he came on a farmer selling wood by the stick, price in proportion to its size, and as many times its value as the Rebel, by his own showing, exceeds the Yankee. Drake had money, spite of shearing and searching. He had hidden it——But I forbear to tell of what ingenious shift he had availed himself, for I remember, that, spite of its well-known loyalty, the "Atlantic Monthly" runs the blockade. First he passed the man, prudence pulling him by the sleeve, and searched lynx-eyed for chips or twigs, over ground scoured daily, in such faint hope as his, by thousands; but he might as well have dragged a brook for the wreck of a seventy-four among its pebbles. Having wasted a precious half-hour of fading daylight, he came back to the dealer to find his stock on the rise; for the influx of new comers had produced an upward tendency in a market sensitive as that of Wall Street. Lest it should swell quite beyond the compass of his pocket, he made haste to buy,—scores of meagre wretches looking anxiously on. That pitiful sight made his heart sore again; and he hardly persuaded himself to take his wood and be off, till he remembered the poor fellow whom he had left resigned and hopeless, sitting quietly on the ground while all was eager stir about him, and hurried back to the spot where he had seen him to find him gone. He had crawled away, and was lost in that great throng.

Not to be balked entirely, Drake shared his firing with those around him; and Virtue, in place of her usual promissory note, gave him his reward instantly, in the shape of a tin cup belonging to one of the party, and their sole cooking-utensil,—for the prison authorities furnish none. His rations—a day's rations, remember—were eight ounces of Indian meal, cob and kernel ground together, (as with us for pigs,) and sour, (a common occurrence,) and two ounces of condemned pork (not to appear again in our pages, as it proved too strong even for poor Drake's hunger). He brought water in the cup from a ditch that traversed the inclosure, and filtered it through a bit of cloth torn from his shirt; and the meal being mixed with this water, (salt was not even hinted at, the market price of that article being four dollars a pound at Andersonville,) it was placed on a strip of wood before the fire, to bake up to the half-raw point, that being the highest perfection attainable in Drake's kitchen: for a range and a steady heat find the baking of meal, so mixed, no easy matter. Eight ounces of meal make a cake six inches long, five broad, and half an inch thick: that is to say, Drake's dinner and supper for that day, and his breakfast and dinner for the next day, were in the mass six inches long, five inches broad, and half an inch thick. Give the figures an Indian-meal consistency, you who are not of that order of Stoics that endures its neighbor's sufferings without a groan. Try the experiment in your own kitchen. One baking will carry conviction farther than batches of statistics. Drake being famished chose to take four meals in one,—improvident man! That done, he went to bed: quite an elaborate arrangement, as practised among us, what with taking off of clothes, and possibly washing and combing, and pulling up of sheets and coverlets, and fitting of pillows to neck and shoulders; but nothing can be more simple than the way they do it there. You just lie down wherever you are,—and sleep, if you can. Drake could and did sleep most soundly.

This was our hero's first taste of prison-life. But a little reading and much talk about camp-fires and behind earth-works—when there was a lull in the storm of shot and shell—had etched out for him certain crude theories, for which he was as ready to do battle as any other hot-headed lad of twenty-three. "Starvation is the masked battery that plays the Deuse with us all," he insisted; "and we must take that, or be taken out—feet foremost. As for your 'how,' good Incredulity and Unbelief, where there is an end, and the will to reach it, the means are tolerably sure to be lying around loose somewhere." But examinations for candidates, and the hundred-pound hail, and the sharp beak of the ram for the untried monitor, are facts for theories; and without the proof of these, none of the three have the positive value of a skillet that has been tried. We have Drake's theory. Here are the facts.

No cooking-utensils were allowed the prisoner; no blankets were allowed the prisoner; no shelter of any sort was allowed the prisoner; no tools or materials to construct a shelter were allowed the prisoner; no means of living as a civilized man were allowed the prisoner; no way of helping himself as a savage was allowed the prisoner. The rations were at all times insufficient, and frequently so foul that starvation itself could not swallow them: consequence, stomach and body weakened by a perpetual hunger, and in many cases utter inability to retain food, good or bad. More than that, the sluggish water-course that served as their reservoir crept across their pen foul and thick with the debris of the Rebel camp above, and in the centre filtered through the spongy ground, and creamed and mantled and spread out loathsomely into a hateful swamp; and the fierce sun, beating down on its slimy surface, drew from its festering pools and mounds of refuse a vapor of death, and the prisoners breathed it; and the reek of unwashed and diseased bodies crowding close on each other, and the sickening, pestilential odor of a huge camp without sewerage or system of policing, made the air a horror, and the prisoners breathed it.

Drake woke, stifling with the heat and horrible steam, and turning and throwing out his arm, only yet half awake, struck on something cold and stiff: the corpse of some poor fellow who had died there in the night beside him. Drake, in a two years' campaign, had grown familiar with death, but could not yet receive him as a bed-fellow, and scrambled up in sickening horror to a day in which there was no breakfast to eat, no arms to clean, no shoes to black, no dress to change, no work of any sort to do, no letters to write or hope for, no books to read, no dinner to prepare, at least till four P.M., when they served out rations,—nothing to fix the eye, or offer subject of thought, but the general and utter wretchedness. Nor could Drake and his fellows take refuge in that unconscious self-gratulation with which we see the miseries of our neighbors; for the future here threw shadows backward. That skeleton, (I use the word not in the exaggerated sense in which we are apt to apply it, but advisedly; and I mean a living human being, whose skin is literally drawn over hideously projecting bones, and who, having actually lost all rounding-out and filling of flesh, has grown transparent, so that by holding an arm in the light you may see the blood-vessels and the inner edges of the bones,)—this skeleton lying there was, perhaps, what Drake should be two months hence; those men quarrelling, hyena-like, for the "job" of burying their dead comrades, that scarred old man moaning for a compass, because he had lost his way and could not find the North, were not lower or more pitiful than Drake might yet be: for stout heart and brave blood and quick brain have no charm against famine, pestilence, and a steady pressure of misery in all possible forms.

The majority of his comrades sank helplessly into this quaking bog. Out of fifty captured of his regiment, Williams, a delicate lad, sickened at once; Dean, a stout old Scotchman, was close on idiocy in a month; Allan, the color-bearer, was shot by the guard,—he had slipped near the dead line, and fallen with his head outside; fourteen were dead of disease; twelve more sank in rayless, hopeless apathy; and Drake—was busy on "A History of the Stockade Prison." The way in which he got the idea and his stationery is worth telling.

There had fallen upon him a dread of motion,—a sombre endurance,—a discouraged sense of thirty thousand hopeless men dragging him down to despair,—a dark cloud that shut out God and home and help,—an inability to compose and fix his drowsy, reeling thought, that spun off dizzily to times at school, and love and laughter at home, and lapsed itself in forgetfulness, and ceased to be even dreamy speculation. Drake, in short, was going to the bottom with his theory about his neck, when a "Providence,"—the modern way of dodging an acknowledgment to God, whom, by the by, our poor boy had quite omitted in his little theory of self-preservation,—in the curious shape of an official blunder, stepped in to his rescue. A cook-house was in erection without the limits of their pen, and, though no carpenter, Drake was set with others to work under guard. The first glimpse of the open country, stretching away to meet the low horizon, brought back the half-forgotten thought of Freedom; and the very trail of her robe is so glorious, that even this poor savage liberty of rock and clod roused in him anew wit to devise and courage to endure. He worked then so merrily and with such good heart, that an admiring inspector more than hinted "at the pity it was to see a decent young fellow like him shut up in the pen yonder."

"So I think," returned Drake, calmly, cutting away at his board.

The official edged a little closer.

"Why don't you come over to us, then? The Confederacy gives good wages. Our Government knows how to pay its men."

"Right there!" retorted Drake. "The Confederacy pays its servants in death and ruin, which, as you say, are the just wages of a traitor. As for me, I want no more of Georgia soil than will make me a grave. That is as much as a man can own here now and be honest."

It was then, from some occult connection of ideas too subtile for searching out, that he imagined, first, a history of the Stockade Prison. He secured a number of long, thin boards, and planed them smooth, for foolscap, pointed bits of wood for pens, manufactured his ink from the rust of some old nails, and made himself a knife by grinding two pieces of iron hoop one upon the other, and, his work on the cook-house at an end, set bravely about his history, when Fate nipped it, as she has done many a more promising one before it; for even when on the final flourish of his title, he heard a sound between a groan and a sigh, and, turning, saw Corny Keegan, a strapping Irishman, and sergeant in his regiment, lying near him. Drake put the tail on his n, and then some uneasy consciousness would have him look again over the edge of his board at the sergeant; for, though there were scores of men lying within view on the ground, there was something in the "give" and laxity of Corny's posture that augured ill for him in Drake's experienced eyes, and, laying the history aside, he went over and kneeled down beside him. The man's eyes were closed, and a dull, yellowish pallor had taken the place of the usual brick tint of his face. Drake essayed to lift his heavy head and shoulders; but Corny settled back again with a groan.

"Och! wurra! Musther Talcott, lave me alone. It's dead I am, kilt intirely, wid the wakeness. Divil's the bit of wood I've had these two days, and not a cint or a frind to the fore, and I'm jist afther mixin' the male here with wather, thinkin' to ate it that way, but it stuck in me throat, and I'm all on a thrimble, and it's a gone man is Corny Keegan; though it's not fur meself that I'd make moan, sence it's aisier dyin' than livin', only the ould mother and Mary that'll fret and——Holy Mother! there comes the sickness, bad scran to it!"

You see now how it happened unto the History of the Stockade Prison to vanish in smoke; for Drake, having neither wood nor the money to buy it, made a fire with his precious boards, and baked Corny's raw meal in a cake, which the poor fellow devoured with a half-starved avidity that made Drake ashamed of the reluctance with which he had offered up his sacrifice. A little corner of his cake Corny left untouched, saying,—

"That's fur the poor crathur over beyant."

"What poor creature?" asked Drake; but Corny's eyes were fixed on the pens and ink, and the sorry remains of his foolscap,—a half-strip of board.

"Och! murther! Musther Talcott, and wuz it thim bits of board ye's writin' on? and ye's burned thim fur me, afther all the throuble ye took wid thim? and to think of the thick head of me, to ate up all that illigant histhry, when I'd heerd the boys talkin' on it, by the same token, and bad scran to me! The Lord be good to ye fur your kindness, Musther Talcott, and make your bed as soft as your heart is, and give ye a line in the Book of Life fur the one I've ate, and"——

"But the poor creature, Corny."

"Thrue for you; and I'm a baste fur forgettin' him, and him starvin' the while. It's jist Cap'n Ireland, if ye chance to mind him. He was the illigant officer and the kind-hearted man; and to see him now! If ye'll come away, Musther Talcott, I'm quite done wid the wakeness, and it's jist over here beyant that he's lyin', poor jontleman, that'll not be long lyin' anywhere out of his grave."

Corny pointed, as he spoke, to a man, or, rather, a bundle of rags having some faint outlines of humanity, on the ground before them,—limbs out helplessly, face set and ghastly, hardly a stir among his tatters to assure them that he yet breathed; and Drake recognized with a thrill of horror, though more wan, more woful, more shadow-like, if possible, the man who had so moved his compassion on the night of his arrival. Keegan knelt beside him, and put his corner of cake to the sufferer's mouth, saying, "Ate a bit, Cap'n dear; thry now"; and then, seeing that the food rested on white and quiet lips,—"Cap'n, don't ye hear me? It's Corny, that spoke wid ye a while back. Saints be merciful to us, he's gone!"

"He is not so happy," said Drake, savagely; "he has only fainted. He has days of such torture as this before him. It would be a mercy to him, and I'm not sure but good religion, to put him outside of the dead line. I wonder why they don't tie us to the cannon's mouth at once. Here! you! guard, there! holla!"

This last was addressed to a soldier in the Rebel gray, who was proceeding leisurely past, but who, on hearing himself so unceremoniously summoned, turned and came slowly towards them.

"Here is a man," said Drake, passionately, "who is dying, not because it pleases God to take him, but because it pleases you to starve him. We have no wood to make a fire, no food to give him, unless it is this scrap of meal that he cannot swallow; but you can save him, and will, if you are a man, and have a man's heart under that dress."

The soldier stared, but, being a phlegmatic animal, heard him quietly to the end, and opened his jaws to answer with due deliberation.

"If you don't like our rules, you shouldn't have come here, you know. And we haven't any orders about wood: you are to look out for yourselves. As for the man, if he's sick, why don't you take him to the stockade yonder, where the doctor is examining for admittance to the hospital?—though I don't see the use: he's too far gone."

Drake and Corny lifted the poor wasted frame, that seemed all too frail to hold the nickering, struggling breath, and carried it to a small stockade crowded with men desirous to enter the hospital. The first assistant to whom they applied was a nervous porcupine, fretted with overwork, and repulsed them roughly.

"What is the use of bringing a dead man here? We have enough living ones on hand."

"Och, and that's no raison, sence it's aisy to see thim's the kind you like best," muttered Corny; but Drake silenced him hastily.

"Keep a civil tongue, Corny. They're the masters here; and it will only be the worse for poor Ireland, if you anger them. Here's another; we'll try him."

But Number Two was Sir Imperturbability, and, without even looking towards them, answered, in a hard, even tone, "Our number is filled; you are too late," and, without lifting an eyelash, went on with his work.

Drake grew white to the lips. The great veins started out on his forehead, and his fingers worked nervously; but it was Corny's turn to interfere.

"Musther Talcott, sure and ye'll not mind what that spalpeen's saying; and there's the docthor himself beyant, and a kind and pleasant jontleman he is. Jist lift the Cap'n, aisy now, and we'll see what the docthor'll say to him."

For the third time, then, Drake made his appeal in behalf of the poor fellow at his feet. The doctor heard him kindly, but answered, as his assistant had done, that their number was full for the day, and was moving on, when Talcott caught him by the arm.

"Doctor," he said, sternly, "one of your assistants refuses my comrade because he is a dying man; another tells me, as you have done, that your number is full for the day. Your own eyes can tell you, that, if not dying now, he will be before to-morrow, of want and exposure. I know nothing of your rules; but I do know, that, if my comrade's life is to be saved, it is to be saved now, and that you have the means, if means there are, for its salvation; and let the awful guilt of the cruelty that brought him here weigh down whose neck it will, as there is a God above us, I do not see how you can write yourself free of murder, or think your hands clean from blood, if you send him back to die."

"God forbid! God forbid!" answered the doctor, shrinking from Drake's vehemence. "You are unjust, young man; it is not my will, but my power to help, that is limited. However, he shall not be sent back; we will do for him what we can, if I have to lodge him in my own house."

"And didn't I tell ye the docthor was the kind jontleman?" cried Corny, joyfully. "Though the hospital is no sich great matther: jist a few tints; but thin he'll be gettin' a bed there, and belike a dhrap of whiskey or a sup of porridge: and if he gits on, it's you he has to thank for it; fur if it hadn't been fur your prachement, my sowl, the docthor would have turned him off, too; and long life to you, says Corny Keegan, and may you niver be needin' anybody's tongue to do the like fur you!"

Drake made no answer; after the fever comes the chill, and he was thinking drearily of the smouldering "History," and of the intolerable leaden hours stretching out before him; but it was not in Corny's nature to remain silent.

"It's the ould jontleman wid the scythe that takes us down, afther all, Musther Talcott; the hours and hours that we sit mopin', wid our fingers as limp as a lady's, and our stomachs clatterin' like an impty can, and sorra a thing to think of but the poor crathurs that's dead, rest their souls! and whin our turn's comin; and it's wishin' I am that it was in the days of the fairies, and that the quane of thim ud jist give us a call, till I'd ask her if she'd iver a pipe and its full of tobacky about her,—or, failin' that, if she'd hoppen to have a knife in her pocket, till I cut out the ould divil Jeff on the gallows, and give him what he'd git, if we iver put our hands on him."

"A knife," repeated Drake, starting from his abstraction, and fumbling in his pocket, from which he drew an old bit of iron. "I am not the queen of the fairies; but with this you can hang Jeff and his cabinet in effigy, if you choose, and can find the material to carve."

"Arrah, and that's aisy, wid illigant bones like these, that chips off like marble or wud itself; but I'm misdoubtin' I'm robbin' ye, Musther Talcott."

"I have another," said Drake, producing it; and as he did so, there breathed upon him, like a breeze from home, a recollection of the dim light shining in an old library down on a broad-leaved volume resting on a carved rack,—of a brown-tressed girl who stood with him before it, her head just at his shoulder, looking at the cathedral on its page,—of the chance touch of a little hand on his,—of the brush of a perfumed sleeve,—of the flitting color in her clear cheek,—of a subtile magic, interweaving blush, perfume, picture, and thought of Alice. Dainty pinnacle and massive arch and carved buttress were photographed on his brain, and arch and pinnacle and buttress could be notched out in bone by his poor skill,—and if he died, some kindly comrade should carry it to Alice, and it should tell her what he had left unsaid,—and if he lived, he would take it to her himself, and it should serve him for the text of his story. That the carving of a design so intricate, on so minute a scale, must prove tedious argued in its favor; and putting off mourning weeds for his history, he took to this new love with a complacency that excited Corny's special admiration.

"Sure, and it's a beautiful thing is religion; and the Divil fly away wid me, if I don't be afther gittin' it meself! Here's Musther Talcott: if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good Catholic, as no one knows betther than meself."

Indeed, Corny's gratitude never grew cold. Few sentences of his that did not end, like the one just quoted, in eulogiums on "Musther Talcott." If Drake was busy with his cathedral, there sat Corny, a few paces distant, hacking at Jeff Davis. If Drake, who had resolved himself into a sort of duo-decimo edition of the Sanitary Commission, was about his work of mercy, there was Corny, a shadow at his heels, bringing water, lifting the poor groaning wretches, and adding his word of comfort. "Cheer up, honey, and do jist as Musther Talcott says; for it's nixt to iverything that he knows, and thim things that he don't know isn't worth a body's attintion." And when Drake himself was ailing, it was Corny who tended him with terrified solicitude, foraged for his wood, and cooked his rations. "When Drake was ailing!"—that was often. His courage was undaunted, his hope perhaps higher, but he had grown perceptibly weak and languid; and there were days—many, alas!—when he lay quietly on the ground, giving an occasional lazy touch to his cathedral, while Corny, as he laughingly said, ruled in his stead.

It was on one of these days that there arose a sudden stir and commotion throughout the camp, a deep and joyful hum, that went from mouth to mouth; and men were seen running hastily from all quarters, the rush setting towards the gate, and drawing in even the sick, who crawled and hobbled along with the stream, at the risk of being trampled by the excited throng, struggling and crowding on pellmell. While Drake looked on in surprise, Corny made his appearance, his eyes sparkling with pleasure.

"News, Musther Talcott dear! an ye wuz dyin', here's news to put the strength in yer legs! Letthers from home, and they say there's five thousand on 'em; and there's an officer chap, wid a mouth like a thrap, countin' 'em as if he was a machine, for all the wuruld, and bad 'cess to him! wid the poor boys crowdin', and heart-famished for only a look at thim, the crumpled things, for it's batthered they is! and he, the spalpeen, won't let one of 'em touch 'em, and no more feelin' with him than if he was a gun, instead of the son of one; and I'm cock-sure I read yer name, Musther Talcott, and there's mine too on the back of a letther, and that's from Mary, hurra! and God bless her! and come, Musther Talcott, fur they'll be dalin' out the letthers or iver we get there."

Drake rose at once; but a description of his sensations, as he hastily made his way towards the throng that surged about the imperturbable official like a sea, is beyond the power of words. The overwhelming surprise and joy of a man who in that evil den had almost forgotten home and the possibility of hearing from it, and his agonizing uncertainty, could be fathomed only by the poor wretches suffering like him, who anxiously pressed on the Rebel officer, and clutched at the letters, and fell back sick with impatience and suspense at his formal delay. At last he opened his grim jaws. The men listened breathlessly.

"All right. Men, there is ten cents postage due on each letter."

An instant's stunned pause, and then half a dozen voices speaking together: "Why, man, you must have had ten cents on each of these letters, before they crossed the lines"; and "How can we pay postage?" "He knows we have no money"; "What good will the bits of paper do him at all, at all?" But the man kept on like an automaton.

"My orders are to collect ten cents on each letter; and I am here to obey orders, not to argue."

Meanwhile those in the rear ranks had heard indistinctly or not at all, and pressed on those in front to know the meaning of the sudden recoil,—for the men had instinctively given back,—and being told, buzzed it on to those behind them; and there began in the crowd a low, deep hum, growing louder, as muttering rose to curses,—growing fiercer, for there is nothing half so savage as despair that has been fooled with a hope,—swelling into a wave of indignation that swept and swayed the whole throng with it, and seemed an instant to threaten and topple over the officer in their midst. But it came to nought. The prudent nudged their neighbors, "With the cannon, boys, they can rake us on all sides"; and the angrier ones fell apart in little groups, and talked in whispers, and glared menacingly at the guard, but made no further demonstration. Those who were happy enough to possess the money received their letters: the feebler ones crawled away with tears furrowing their wan cheeks; and the unmoved official thrust the remaining letters of mother, father, wife, and children of these men into the bags before their longing eyes; and even while the miserable men flung themselves before him, and with outstretched hands tried to hold him back, the gate clanged after him.

Drake, who long ago had spent his little hoard, had received this terrible blow in entire silence, and turned to go without comment or answer to Corny's vociferations. But eyes were dim, or head was reeling; for a few paces on he stumbled, and would have fallen over a soldier lying in his path, but for Corny, who was close behind him, and who at once assailed the man over whom Drake had tripped, and who still lay quietly, without even a stir or motion of his head.

"Ye lazy spalpeen! what the Divil are ye stretched out there for, to break dacent folk's necks over the length of ye? Stir yourself, or I'll"——Then with a sudden and total change of tone, as he looked more closely into the quiet face, "The Saints pity us! it's Cap'n Ireland; and in the name of Hiven, how came yer Honor here on the——Och! Lord forgive me! Talking to a dead corpse! Och! wurra! wurra! Musther Talcott, it's dead he is, sure! kilt this time intirely!"

"You may well say killed," said a soldier who had joined them. "If ever a man committed murder, then that man did that kicked him out of the hospital to die."

"What is that?" demanded Drake, who had seemed in a sort of stupor, but roused out of it fiercely at the man's last words. "Do you know what you are saying?"

"I think I ought," returned the soldier. "I was in the hospital at the time; I'm only just out; and I saw it myself. The assistant surgeon stops at his bed, where he laid only just breathing like, and says he, 'What man is this? I've seen him before'; and says some one, 'His name is Ireland'; and says the surgeon, like a flash, 'Ireland? Ireland of the —th? Do you know what that is? It is a colored regiment, and this Abolition scoundrel is the captain of it. I knew I had seen him. Here! put him out; let him go and herd with the rest'; and when some one said he was dying any way, said the surgeon, with a string of oaths, 'Put him out, I tell you; the bed is too good for him'; and then, Sir, when the poor young gentleman, who was dizzy-like, and didn't understand, fell down beside the door, from weakness, that—that infernal brute kicked him, and swore at him, as vermin that cumbered the ground; and the men brought him away here, Sir, it's two days back, and he's just passed away"; and kneeling beside the body, and lifting the poor wasted hands, "I swear, if ever I get back, to revenge his death, and never to let sword or pistol drop while this cursed Rebellion is going on."

"Amin!" said Corny, solemnly, and "Amen" formed itself on Drake's white lips; but by some curious mental process his thoughts would wander away from the stiffening body before him to a vision of home, and Sabbaths when sweet-toned bells called quiet families to church, and little children playing about the doorsteps, and peaceful women in sunny houses, and gay girls waving on men to battle through glittering streets, and prayers, and looks of love, and songs, and flowers, and Alice; and in on this rolled suddenly a sense of what was actually around him, as under a calm sky and out of a still sea swoops sometimes suddenly some huge wave in on the quiet beach. He saw about him rags, filth, men sick, men dying, men dead, men groaning, men cursing, men gibbering. There rose up before him the grim succession of days of hunger, pain, sorrow, and loneliness, already past; there came upon him a terrible threatening of days to come, yet worse,—without hope or relief, unless at the dead line. He rose, staggering, and with a wild and desperate look that startled Corny.

"Fur the Lord's sake, wud ye desthroy yerself?" cried the faithful fellow, throwing his arms about him to hold him fast. "Och, honey! ye're a heretic, and the good Lord's a Catholic; but thin He made us all, and He has pity on the poor crathurs that's sufferin' here, or His heart's harder nor Corny's: the Saints forgive me fur such a spache! Pray, Musther Talcott, pray"——

"Pray!" exclaimed Drake; "is there a God looking down here?"—and dropping on his knees, he gasped out,—

"O God! if Thou dost yet hear, save me—from going mad!" and fell forward at Corny's feet, senseless.

He was carried to the hospital, and lay there weeks, lost in the delirium of a fever; and every morning there peered in at the inner door of the stockade a huge shock of hair, and a red, anxious face, with,—

"The top of the mornin' to ye, docthor, and it's ashamed I am to be afther throublin' ye so often; but will yer Honor plase to tell me how Musther Talcott is the day?"—and having received the desired information, Corny would take himself off with blessings "on his Honor, that had consideration for the feelings of the poor Irishman."

One morning there was a change in the programme.

"I have good news for you, Corny," said the kindly doctor. "Talcott is out of danger."

"Hurray! and the Saints be praised fur that!" shouted Corny, cutting a caper.

"But I have better news yet," continued the doctor, watching Corny closely. "His name is on the list of exchanged prisoners, and he will be sent home on Thursday next."

Corny's face fell.

"Is he, yer Honor?" very hesitatingly; and then, suddenly clearing up, "and hurra fur that, too! and I'm an ongrateful baste to be sorry that he's to be clear of this hole,—bad scran to it!—and long life till him, and a blessin' go wid him! and if"—choking—"we don't mate on earth, sure the Lord won't kape him foriver in purgatory, and he so kind and feelin' for the sick."

The doctor could not suppress a laugh at this limited hope.

"But, Corny, what if you are to be sent home too?"

"Me?—and was it me yer Honor was sayin'? Och, Hivin bless ye fur that word!—and it's not laughin' at me is yer Honor? Sure ye'd niver have the heart to chate a poor boy like that. All the Saints be praised! I'm a man agin, and not a starvin' machine; and I shall see ye, Mary, mavourneen! but, och, the poor boys that we're lavin'! Hurra! how iver will I ate three males a day, and slape under a blanket, and think of thim on the ground and starvin' by inches!"

During the remainder of his stay, Corny balanced between joy and his selfishness in being joyful, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous,—breaking out one moment in the most extravagant demonstration, to be twitched from it the next by a penitential spasm. As for Drake, hardly yet clear of the shadows that haunted his fever, he but mistily comprehended the change that was before him; and it will need weeks and perhaps months of home-nursing and watching before body and mind can win back their former strength and tone.

Meanwhile, people of the North, what of the poor boys left behind at Andersonville, starving, as Corny said, by inches, with the winter before them, and their numbers swelled by the hundreds that a late Rebel paper gleefully announces to be on their way from more Northern prisons?



DOCTOR JOHNS.

VII.

It was not easy in that day to bring together the opinions of a Connecticut parish that had been jostled apart by a parochial quarrel, and where old grievances were festering. Indeed, it is never easy to do this, and unite opinions upon a new comer, unless he have some rare gift of eloquence, which so dazes the good people that they can no longer remember their petty griefs, or unless he manage with rare tact to pass lightly over the sore points, and to anoint them by a careful hand with such healing salves as he can concoct out of his pastoral charities. Mr. Johns had neither art nor eloquence, as commonly understood; yet he effected a blending of all interests by the simple, earnest gravity of his character. He ignored all angry disputation; he ignored its results. He came as a shepherd to a deserted sheepfold; he came to preach the Bible doctrines in their literalness. He had no reproofs, save for those who refused the offers of God's mercy,—no commendation, save for those who sought His grace whose favor is life everlasting. There were no metaphysical niceties in his discourses, athwart which keen disputants might poise themselves for close and angry conflict; he recognized no necessities but the great ones of repentance and faith; and all the mysteries of the Will he was accustomed to solve by grand utterance of that text which he loved above all others,—however much it may have troubled him in his discussion of Election,—"whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely."

Inheriting as he did all the religious affinities of his mother, these were compacted and made sensitive by years of silent protest against the proud worldly sufficiency of his father, the Major. Such qualities and experience found repose in the unyielding dogmas of the Westminster divines. At thirty the clergyman was as aged as most men of forty-five,—seared by the severity of his opinions, and the unshaken tenacity with which he held them. He was by nature a quiet, almost a timid man; but over the old white desk and crimson cushion, with the choir of singers in his front and the Bible under his hand, he grew into wonderful boldness. He cherished an exalted idea of the dignity of his office,—a dignity which he determined to maintain to the utmost of his power; but in the pulpit only did the full measure of this exaltation come over him. Thence he looked down serenely upon the flock of which he was the appointed guide, and among whom his duty lay. The shepherd leading his sheep was no figure of speech for him; he was commissioned to their care, and was conducting them—old men and maidens, boys and gray-haired women—athwart the dangers of the world, toward the great fold. On one side always the fires of hell were gaping; and on the other were blazing the great candlesticks around the throne.

But when, on some occasion, he had, under the full weight of his office, inveighed against a damning evil, and, as he fondly hoped by the stillness in the old meeting-house, wrought upon sinners effectually, it was disheartening to be met by some hoary member of his flock, whom perhaps he had borne particularly in mind, and to be greeted cheerfully with, "Capital sermon, Mr. Johns! those are the sort that do the business! I like those, parson!" The poor man, humiliated, would bow his thanks. He lacked the art (if it be an art) to press the matter home, when he met one of his parishioners thus. Indeed, his sense of the importance of his calling and his extreme conscientiousness gave him an air of timidity outside the pulpit, which offered great contrast to that which he wore in the heat of his sermonizing. Not that he forgot the dignity of his position for a moment, but he wore it too trenchantly; he could never unbend to the free play of side-talk. Hence he could not look upon the familiar spirit of badinage in which some of his brethren of the profession indulged, without serious doubts of their complete submission to the Heavenly King. Always the weight of his solemn duties pressed sorely on him; always amid pitfalls he was conducting his little flock toward the glories of the Great Court. There is many a man narrowed and sharpened by metaphysical inquiry to such a degree as to count the indirection and freedom of kindly chat irksome, and the occasion of a needless blunting of that quick mental edger with which he must scathe all he touches. But the stiffness of Mr. Johns was not that of constant mental strain; he did not refine upon his dogmas; but he gave them such hearty entertainment, and so inwrapped his spirit with their ponderous gravity, that he could not disrobe in a moment, or uncover to every chance comer.

It is quite possible that by reason of this grave taciturnity the clergyman won more surely upon the respect of his people. "He is engrossed," said they, "with greater matters; and in all secular affairs he recognizes our superior discernment." Thus his inaptitude in current speech was construed by them into a delicate flattery. They greatly relished his didactic, argumentative sermonizing, since theirs was a religion not so much of the sensibilities as of the intellect. They agonized toward the truth, if not by intense thinking, yet by what many good people are apt to mistake for it,—immense endurance of the prolix thought of others.

If the idea of universal depravity had been ignored,—as it sometimes is in these latitudinarian days,—or the notion of any available or worthy Christian culture, as distinct from a direct and clearly defined agency, both as to time and force, of the Spirit, had been entertained, he would have lost half of the elements by which his arguments gained logical sequence. But, laboring his way from stake to stake of the old dogmas of the Westminster divines, he fastened to them stoutly, and swept round from each as a centre a great scathing circle of deductions, that beat wofully upon the heads of unbelievers. And if a preacher attack only unbelievers, he has the world with him, now as then; it is only he who has the bad taste to meddle with the caprices of believers who gets the raps and the orders of dismissal.

Thus it happened that good Mr. Johns came to win the good-will of all the parish of Ashfield, while he challenged their respect by his uniform gravity. It is even possible that a consciousness of a certain stateliness and stiffness of manner became in some measure a source of pride to him, and that he enjoyed, in his subdued way, the disposition of the lads of the town to give him a wide pass, instead of brushing brusquely against him, as if he were some other than the parson.

In those days he wrote to his sister Eliza,—

"We are fairly settled in a pleasant home upon the main street. The meeting-house, which you will remember, is near by; and I have, by the blessing of God, a full attendance every Lord's day. They listen to my poor sermons with commendable earnestness; and I trust they may prove to them 'a savor of life unto life.' We also find the people of the town neighborly and kind. Squire Elderkin has proved particularly so, and is a very energetic man in all matters relating to the parish. I fear greatly, however, that he still lacks the intimate favor of God, and has not humbled himself to entire submission. Yet he is constant in his observance of nearly all the outward forms of devotion and of worship; and we hear of his charities in every house we enter. Strange mystery of Providence, that he should not long since have been broken down by grace, and become in all things a devout follower of the Master! I hope yet to see him brought a humble suppliant into the fold. His wife is a most excellent person, lowly in her faith, and zealous of good works. The same may also be said of their worthy maiden sister, Miss Joanna Meacham, who is, of a truth, a matron in Israel. Rachel and myself frequently take tea at their house; and she is much interested in the little family of Elderkins, who, I am glad to say, enjoy excellent advantages, and such of them as are of proper age are duly taught in the Shorter Westminster Catechism.

"Deacon Tourtelot, another of our neighbors, is a devout man; and Dame Tourtelot (as she is commonly called) is a woman of quite extraordinary zeal and capacity. Their daughter Almira is untiring in attendance, and aids the services by singing treble. Deacon Simmons, who lives at quite a distance from us, is represented to be a man of large means and earnest in the faith. He has a large farm, and also a distillery, both of which are said to be managed with great foresight and prudence. I trust that the reports which I hear occasionally of his penuriousness are not wholly true, and that in due time his hand will be opened by divine grace to a more effectual showing forth of the deeds of charity. I do not allow myself to entertain any of the scandals which unfortunately belong more or less to every parish, and which so interrupt the growth of that Christian love which is the parent of all virtues; and I trust that these good people may come in time to see that it is better to live together in harmony than to foment those bickerings which have led so recently to the dismissal of my poor brother in the Gospel. Our home affairs are, I believe, managed prudently,—the two servants being most excellent persons, and my little Rachel a very sunbeam in the house."

And the little sunbeam writes to Mrs. Handby at about the same date,—we will say from six to eight months after their entry,—

"Everything goes on delightfully, dear mamma. Esther is a good creature, and helps me wonderfully. You would laugh to see me fingering the raw meats at the butcher's cart to choose nice pieces, which I really can do now; and it is fortunate I can, for the goodman Benjamin knows positively nothing of such things, and I am sure wouldn't be able to tell mutton from beef.

"The little parlor is nicely furnished; there is an elegant hair sofa, and over the mantel is the portrait of Major Johns; and then the goodman has insisted upon hanging under the looking-glass my old sampler in crewel, with a gilt frame around it; on the table is the illustrated 'Pilgrim's Progress' papa gave me, and a volume of 'Calmet's Dictionary' I have taken out of the study—it is full of such beautiful pictures,—and 'Mrs. Hannah More' in full gilt. The big Bible you gave us, the goodman says, is too large for easy handling; so it is kept on a stand in the corner, with the great fly-brush of peacock's feathers hanging over it. I have put charming blue chintz curtains in the spare chamber, and arranged everything there very nicely; so that, before a certain event, you must be sure to come and take possession.

"Last night we took tea again with the Elderkins, and Mrs. Elderkin was as kind to me as ever, and Miss Meacham is an excellent woman, and the little ones are loves of children; and I wish you could see them. But you will, you know, quite soon. Sometimes I fall to crying, when I think of it all; and then the goodman comes and puts his hand on my head, and says,—'Rachel! Rachel, my dear! is this your gratitude for all God's mercies?' And then I jump up, and kiss his grave face, and laugh through my tears. He is a dear good man. This is all very foolish, I suppose; but, mamma, isn't it the way with all women?

"Dame Tourtelot is a great storm of a creature, and she comes down upon us every now and then, and advises me about the housekeeping and the table, and the servants, and Benjamin,—giving me a great many good hints, I suppose; but in such a way, and calling me 'my child,' as makes me feel good for nothing, and as if I were not fit to be mistress. Miss Almira is a quiet thing, and has a piano. She dresses very queerly, and, I have been told, written poetry for the 'Hartford Courant,' over two stars—* *. She seems a good creature, though, and comes to see us often. The chaise is a great comfort, and our old horse Dobbins is a good, sober horse. Benjamin often takes me with him in his drives to see the parishioners who live out of town. He tells me about the trees and the flowers, and a thousand matters I never heard of. Indeed, he is a good man, and he knows a world of things."

The tender-hearted, kind soul makes her way into the best graces of the people of Ashfield: the older ones charmed with that blithe spirit of hers, and all the younger ones mating easily with her simple, outspoken naturalness. She goes freely everywhere; she is not stiffened by any ceremony, nor does she carry any stately notions of the dignity of her office,—some few there may be who wish that she had a keener sense of the importance of her position; she even bursts unannounced into the little glazed corner of the Tew partners, where she prattles away with the sedate Mistress Tew in good, kindly fashion, winning that stiff old lady's heart, and moving her to declare to all customers that the parson's wife has no pride about her, and is "a dear little thing, to be sure!"

On summer evenings, Dobbins is to be seen, two or three times in the week, jogging along before the square-topped chaise, upon some highway that leads into the town, with the parson seated within, with slackened rein, and in thoughtful mood, from which he rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the wise old bird beside her.

VIII.

On the return from one of these parochial drives, not long after their establishment at Ashfield, it happened that the good parson and his wife were not a little startled at sight of a stranger lounging familiarly at their door. A little roof jutted out over the entrance to the parsonage, without any apparent support, and flanking the door were two plank seats, with their ends toward the street, cut away into the shape of those "settles" which used to be seen in country taverns, and which here seemed to invite a quiet out-of-door gossip. But the grave manner of the parson had never invited to a very familiar use of this loitering-place, even by the most devoted of the parishioners; and the appearance of a stranger of some two-and-thirty years, with something in his manner, as much as in his dress, which told of large familiarity with the world, lounging upon this little porch, had amazed the passers-by, as much as it now did the couple who drove up slowly in the square-topped chaise.

"Who can it be, Benjamin?" says Rachel.

"I really can't say," returns the parson.

"He seems very much at home, my dear,"—as indeed he does, with his feet stretched out upon the bench, and eyeing curiously the approaching vehicle.

As it draws near, his observation being apparently satisfactory, he walks briskly down to the gate, and greets the parson with,—

"My dear Johns, I'm delighted to see you!"

At this the parson knew him, and greets him,—

"Maverick, upon my word!" and offers his hand.

"And this is Mrs. Johns, I suppose," says the stranger, bowing graciously, "Allow me, Madam"; and he assists her to alight. "Your husband and myself were old college-friends, partners of the same bench, and I've used no ceremony, you see, in finding him out."

Rachel, eyeing him furtively, with a little rustic courtesy, "is glad to see any of her husband's old friends."

The parson—upon his feet now—shakes the stranger's hand heartily again.

"I am very glad to see you, Maverick; but I thought you were out of the country."

"So I have been, Johns; am home only upon a visit, and hearing by accident that you had become a clergyman—as I always thought you would—and were settled hereabout, I determined to run down and see you before sailing again."

"You must stop with me. Rachel, dear, will you have the spare room made ready for Mr. Maverick?"

"My dear Madam, don't give yourself the least trouble; I am an old traveller, and can make myself quite comfortable at the tavern yonder; but if it's altogether convenient, I shall be delighted to pass the night under the roof of my old friend. I shall be off to-morrow noon," continued he, turning to the parson, "and until then I want you to put off your sermons and make me one of your parishioners."

So they all went into the parsonage together.

Frank Maverick, as he had said, had shared the same bench with Johns in college; and between them, unlike as they were in character, there had grown up a strong friendship,—one of those singular intimacies which bind the gravest men to the most cheery and reckless. Maverick was forever running into scrapes and consulting the cool head of Johns to help him out of them. There was never a tutor's windows to be broken in, or a callithumpian frolic, (which were in vogue in those days,) but Maverick bore a hand in both; and somehow, by a marvellous address that belonged to him, always managed to escape, or at most to receive only some grave admonition from the academic authorities. Johns advised with him, (giving as serious advice then as he could give now,) and added from time to time such assistance in his studies as a plodding man can always lend to one of quick brain, who makes no reckoning of time.

Upon a certain occasion Maverick had gone over with Johns to his home, and the Major had taken an immense fancy to the buoyant young fellow, so full of spirits, and so charmingly frank. "If your characters could only be welded together," he used to say to his son, "you would both be the better for it; he a little of your gravity, and you something of his rollicking carelessness." This bound Johns to his friend more closely than ever. There was, moreover, great honesty and conscientiousness in the lad's composition: he could beat in a tutor's window for the frolic of the thing, and by way of paying off some old grudge for a black mark; but there was a strong spice of humanity at the bottom even of his frolics. It happened one day, that his friend Ben Johns told him that one of the bats which had done terrible execution on the tutor's windows had also played havoc on his table, breaking a bottle of ink, and deluging some half-dozen of the tutor's books; "and do you know," said Johns, "the poor man who has made such a loss is saving up all his pay here for a mother and two or three fatherless children?"

"The Deuse he is!" said Maverick, and his hand went to his pocket, which was always pretty full. "I say, Johns, don't peach on me, but I think I must have thrown that bat, (which Johns knew to be hardly possible, for he had only come up at the end of the row,) and I want you to get this money to him, to make those books good again. Will you do it, old fellow?"

This was the sort of character to win upon the quiet son of the Major. "If he were only more earnest," he used to say,—"if he could give up his trifling,—if he would only buckle down to serious study, as some of us do, what great things he might accomplish!" A common enough fancy among those of riper years,—as if all the outlets of a man's nerve-power could be dammed into what shape the possessor would!

Maverick was altogether his old self this night at the parsonage. Rachel listened admiringly, as he told of his travel and of his foreign experiences. He was the son of a merchant of an Eastern seaport who had been long engaged in the Mediterranean trade with a branch house at Marseilles; and thither Frank had gone two or three years after leaving college, to fill some subordinate post, and finally to work his way into a partnership, which he now held. Of course he had not lived there those seven or eight years last past without his visit to Paris; and his easy, careless way of describing what he had seen there in Napoleon's day—the fetes, the processions, the display—was a kind of talk not often heard in a New England village, and which took a strong hold upon the imagination of Rachel.

"And to think," says the parson, "that such a people are wholly infidel!"

"Well, well, I don't know," says Maverick; "I think I have seen a good deal of faith in the Popish churches."

"Faith in images; faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns, with a sigh. "'Tis always the scarlet woman of Babylon!"

"I know," says Maverick, smiling, "these things are not much to your taste; but we have our Protestant chapels, too."

"Not much better, I fear," says Johns. "They are sadly impregnated with the Genevese Socinianism."

This was about the time that the orthodox Louis Empaytaz was suffering the rebuke of the Swiss church authorities for his "Considerations upon the Divinity of Jesus Christ." Aside from this, all the parson's notions of French religion and of French philosophy were of the most aggravated degree of bitterness. That set of Voltaire, which the Major, his father, had once purchased, had not been without its fruit,—not legitimate, indeed, but most decided. The books so cautiously put out of sight—like all such—had caught the attention of the son; whereupon his mother had given him so terrible an account of French infidelity, and such a fearful story of Voltaire's dying remorse,—current in orthodox circles,—as had caught strong hold upon the mind of the boy. All Frenchmen he had learned to look upon as the children of Satan, and their language as the language of hell. With these sentiments very sincerely entertained, he regarded his poor friend as one living at the very door-posts of Pandemonium, and hoped, by God's mercy, to throw around him even now a little of the protecting grace which should keep him from utter destruction. But though this was uppermost in his mind, it did not forbid a grateful outflow of his old sympathies and expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful swallowing of soul and body; and the careless grace of talk, which so charmed the innocent Rachel, appeared to the exacting Puritan a token of the enslavement of his old friend to sense and the guile of this world.

Nine o'clock was the time for evening prayers at the parsonage, which under no circumstances were ever omitted; and as the little clock in the dining-room chimed the hour, Mr. Johns rose to lead the way from his study, where they had passed the evening.

"It's our hour for family prayer," says Johns; "will you come with us?"

"Most certainly," says Maverick, rising. "I should be sorry not to have this little scene of New England life to take back with me: it will recall home pleasantly."

The servants were summoned, and the parson read in his wonted way a chapter,—not selected, but designated by the old book-mark, which was carried forward from day to day throughout the sacred volume. In his prayer the parson asked specially for Divine Grace to overshadow all those journeying from their homes,—to protect them,—to keep alive in their hearts the teachings of their youth,—to shield them from the insidious influences of sin and of the world, and to bring them in God's own good time into the fold of the elect.

Shortly after prayers Rachel retired for the night. The parson and his old friend talked for an hour or more in the study, but always as men whose thoughts were unlike; Maverick filled and exuberant with the prospects of this life; and the parson, by a settled purpose, which seemed like instinct, making all his observations bear upon futurity.

"The poor man has grown very narrow," thought Maverick.

And yet Johns entered with friendly interest into the schemes of his companion.

"So you count upon spending your life there?" says the parson.

"It is quite probable," says Maverick. "I am doing exceedingly well; the climate, bating some harsh winds in winter, is enjoyable. Why shouldn't I?"

"It's a question to put to your conscience," says Johns, "not to me. A man can but do his duty, as well there as here perhaps. A little graft of New Englandism may possibly work good. Do you mean to marry in France, Maverick?"

A shade passed over the face of his friend; but recovering himself, with a little musical laugh, he said,—

"I really can't say: there are very charming women there, Johns."

"I am afraid so," uttered the parson, dryly.

"By the way," said Maverick,—"you will excuse me,—but you will be having a family by and by,"—at which the parson fairly blushed,—"you must let me send over some little gift for your first boy; it sha'n't be one that will harm him, though it comes from our heathen side of the world."

"There's a gift you might bestow, Maverick, that I should value beyond price."

"Pray what is it?"

"Live such a life, my friend, that I could say to any boy of mine, 'Follow the example of that man.'"

"Ah," said Maverick, with his easy, infectious laugh, "that's more than I can promise. To tell the truth, Johns, I don't believe I could by any possibility fall into the prim, stiff ways which make a man commendable hereabout. Even if I were religiously disposed, or should ever think of adopting your profession, I fancy I should take to the gown and liturgy, as giving a little freer movement to my taste. You don't like to think of that, I'll wager."

"You might do worse things," said the parson, sadly.

"I know I might," said Maverick, thoughtfully; "I greatly fear I shall. Yet it's not altogether a bad life I'm looking forward to, Johns: we'll say ten or fifteen more years of business on the other side; marrying sometime in the interval,—certainly not until I have a good revenue; then, possibly, I may come over among you again, establish a pretty home in the neighborhood of one of your towns; look after a girl and boy or two, who may have come into the family; get the title of Squire; give fairly to the missionary societies; take my place in a good big family-pew; dabble in politics, perhaps, so that people shall dub me 'Honorable': isn't that a fair show, Johns?"

There was a thief in the candle, which the parson removed with the snuffers.

"As for yourself," continued Maverick, "they'll give you the title of Doctor after a few years!"—The parson raised his hand, as if to put away the thought.—"I know," continued his friend, "you don't seek worldly honors: but they will drift upon you; they'll all love you hereabout, in spite of your seriousness (the parson smiled); you'll have your house full of children; you'll be putting a wing here and a wing there; and when I come back, twenty years hence, if I live, I shall find you comfortably gray, and your pretty wife in spectacles, knitting mittens for the youngest boy, and the oldest at college, and your girls grown into tall village belles;—but, Johns, don't, I beg, be too strict with them; you can't make a merry young creature the better by insisting upon seriousness; you can't crowd goodness into a body by pounding upon it. What are you thinking of, Johns?"

The parson was sitting with his eyes bent upon a certain figure in the green and red Scotch carpet.

"Thinking, Maverick, that in twenty years' time, if alive, we may be less fit for heaven than we are to-day."

There was a pitying kindliness in the tone of the minister, as he said this, which touched Maverick.

"There's no doubt on your score, Johns, God bless you! But we must paddle our own boats: I dare say you'll come out a long way before me; you always did, you know. Every man to his path."

"There's but one," said Johns, solemnly, "that leadeth to eternal rest."

"Yes, I know," says Maverick, with a gay smile upon his face, which the parson remembered long after, "we are the goats; but you must have a little pity on us, for all that."

With these words they parted for the night.

Next morning, before the minister was astir, Maverick was strolling about the garden and the village street, and at breakfast appeared with a little bunch of violets he had gathered from Rachel's flower-patch, and laid them by her plate. (It was a graceful attention, that not even the clergyman had ever paid to her.) And he further delighted her with a description of some floral fete which he had witnessed at Marseilles, in the year of the Restoration.

"They welcomed their old masters, then?" said the parson.

"Perhaps so; one can never say. The French express their joy with flowers, and they bury their grief with flowers. I like them for it; I think there's a ripe philosophy in it."

"A heathen philosophy," said the minister.

At noon Maverick left upon the old swaying stage-coach,—looking out, as he passed, upon the parsonage, with its quaintly panelled door, and its diamond lights, of which he long kept the image in his mind. That brazen knocker he seemed to hear in later years, beating,—beating as if his brain lay under it.

"I think Mr. Frank Maverick is a most charming man," said the pretty Mrs. Johns to her husband.

"He is, Rachel, and generous and open-hearted,—and yet, in the sight of Heaven, I fear, a miserable sinner."

"But, Benjamin, my dear, we are all sinners."

"All,—all, Rachel, God help us!"

IX.

In December of the year 1820 came about a certain event of which hint has been already given by the party chiefly concerned; and Mrs. Johns presented her husband with a fine boy, who was in due time christened—Reuben.

Mrs. Handby was present at this eventful period, occupying the guest-chamber, and delighting in all the little adornments that had been prepared by the loving hands of her daughter; and upon the following Sabbath, Mr. Johns, for the first time since his entrance upon the pastoral duties of Ashfield, ventured to repeat an old sermon. Dame Tourtelot had been present on the momentous occasion, with such a tempest of suggestions in regard to the wrappings and feeding of the new comer, that the poor mother had quietly begged the good clergyman to decoy her, on her next visit, into his study. This he did, and succeeded in fastening her with a discussion upon the import of the word baptize, in which he was in a fair way of being carried by storm, if he had not retreated under cover of his Greek Lexicon.

Mrs. Elderkin had been zealous in neighborly offices, and had brought, in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer, which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning pride in this accession to the family,—walking up and down the street with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the speedy stewing of pap, which, considering that the donors were childless people, was esteemed a very great mark of respect for the minister.

Would it be strange, if the father felt a new ambition stirring in him, as he listened from his study to that cry of a child in the house? He does feel it, and struggles against it. Are not all his flock his spiritual children? and is he not appointed of Heaven to lead them toward the rest which is promised? Should that babe be more to him than a hundred others who are struggling through life's snares wearily? It may touch him, indeed, cruelly to think it; but is not the soul of the most worthless person of his parish as large in the eye of the Master as this of his first-born? Shall these human ties supplant the spiritual ones by which we are all coheirs of eternal death or of eternal life? And in this way the minister schools himself against too demonstrative a joy or love, and prays God silently that His gift may not be a temptation.

For all this, however, there is many a walk which would have been taken of old under the orchard trees now transferred to the chamber, where he paces back and forth with the babe in his arms, soothing its outcry, as he thinks out his discourse for the following Sabbath.

In due time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course. From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing, and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a corps of the Congregational brotherhood. As for the parson, he was like a child in all household matters. Over and over he would invite his brethren flocking in from the neighboring villages to pass the night with him, when Rachel would decoy him into a corner, and declare, with a most pitiable look of distress, that not a bed was unoccupied in the house. Whereupon the goodman would quietly take his hat, and trudge away to Squire Elderkin's, or, on rarer occasions, to Deacon Tourtelot's, and ask the favor of lodging with them one of his clerical brethren.

At other times, before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his walk in the orchard,—an order which the poor man never ventured to resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of Cowper,—the only poet he habitually read,—he would sally out with hat and cane,—this latter a gift of an admiring parishioner, which it pleased Rachel he should use, and which she always brought to him at such times, with a little childish mime of half-entreaty and half-command that it was not in his heart to resist, and which on rare occasions (that were subject of self-accusation afterward) provoked him to an answering kiss. At which Rachel:—

"Now go and leave us, please; there's a good man! And mind," (shaking her forefinger at him,) "dinner at half past twelve: Larkin will blow the shell."

The parson, as he paced back and forth under the apple-trees, out of sight, and feeling the need of more vigorous exercise than his usual meditative gait afforded, would on occasions brandish his cane and assume a military air and stride, (he remembered the Major's only too well,) getting in a glow with the unusual movement, and in the heat of it thanking God for all the blessings that had befallen him: a pleasant home; a loving wife; a little boy to bear the name, in which, with all his spiritual tendencies, he yet took a very human pride; health,—and he whisked his cane as vigorously as ever the Major had done his cumbrous sword,—the world's comforts; a congregation that met him kindly, that listened kindly. Was he not leading them in the path of salvation, and rejoicing in the leadership?

And then, to himself,—"Be careful, careful, Benjamin Johns, that you take not too great a pride in this work and home of yours. You are but an instrument in greater hands; He doeth with you what seemeth Him best. Let not the enticements of the world be too near your thought." In this way it was that the minister pruned down all the shoots of his natural affections, lest they might prove a decoy to him, and wrapped himself ever more closely in the rigors of his chosen theology.

As the boy Reuben grows, and gains a firmer footing, he sometimes totters beside the clergyman in these orchard walks, clinging blindly to his hand, and lifting his uncertain feet with great effort over the interrupting tufts of grass, unheeded by the minister, who is pondering some late editorial of the "Boston Recorder." But far oftener the boy is with the mother, burying his face in that dear lap of hers,—lifting the wet face to have tears kissed away and forgotten. And as he thrives and takes the strength of three or four years, he walks beside her under the trees of the village street, clad in such humble finery as the Handby grandparents may have bestowed; and he happens oftenest, on these strolls with Rachel, into the hospitable home of the Elderkins, where there are little ones to romp with the boy. Most noticeable of all, just now, one Philip Elderkin, (of whom more will have to be said as this story progresses,) only a year the senior of Reuben, but of far stouter frame, who looks admiringly on the minister's child, and as he grows warm in play frights him with some show of threat, which makes the little Reuben run for cover to the arms of Rachel. Whereat the mother kisses him into boldness, and tells him that Phil is a good boy and means no harm to him.

Often, too, in the square-topped chaise, the child is seated on a little stool between the parson and his wife, as they drive away upon their visits to the outskirts of the parish,—puzzling them with those strange questions which come from a boy just exploring his way into the world of talk.

"Benjamin," says Rachel, as they were nearing home upon one of these drives, "Reuben is quite a large boy now, you know; have you ever written to your friend, Mr. Maverick? You remember he promised a gift for him."

"Never," said the minister, whose goodness rarely took the shape of letter-writing,—least of all where the task would seem to remind of a promised favor.

"You've not forgotten it? You've not forgotten Mr. Maverick?"

"Not forgotten, Rachel,—not forgotten to pray for him."

"I would write, Benjamin; it might be something that would be of service to Reuben. Please don't forget it, Benjamin."

And the minister promised.

In the autumn of 1824,—the minister of Ashfield being still in good favor with nearly all his parishioners, and his wife Rachel being still greatly beloved,—a rumor ran through the town, one day, that there was serious illness at the parsonage, the Doctor's horse and saddle-bags being observed in waiting at the front gate for two hours together. Following close upon this, the Tew partners reported—having received undoubted information from Larkin, who still kept in his old service—that a daughter was born to the minister, but so feeble that there were grave doubts if the young Rachel could survive. The report was well founded; and after three or four days of desperate struggle with life, the poor child dropped away. Thus death came into the parsonage with so faint and shadowy a tread, it hardly startled one. The babe had been christened in the midst of its short struggle, and in this the father found such comfort as he could; yet reckoning the poor, fluttering little soul as a sinner in Adam, through whom all men fell, he confided it with a great sigh to God.

It would have been well, if his grief had rested there. But two days thereafter there was a rumor on the village street,—flying like the wind, as such rumors do, from house to house,—"The minister's wife is dead!"

"I want to know!" said Mrs. Tew, lifting herself from her task of assorting the mail, and removing her spectacles in nervous haste. "Do tell! It a'n't possible! Miss Johns dead?"

"Yes," says Larkin, "as true as I live, she's dead"; and his voice broke as he said it,—the kind little woman had so won upon him.

Squire Elderkin, like a good Christian, came hurrying to the parsonage to know what this strange report could mean. The study was unoccupied. With the familiarity of an old friend he made his way up the cramped stairs. The chamber-door was flung wide open: there was no reason why the whole parish might not come in. The nurse, sobbing in a corner, was swaying back and forth, her hands folded across her lap. Reuben, clinging to the coverlet, was feeling his way along the bed, if by chance his mother's hand might catch hold upon his; and the minister standing with a chair before him, his eyes turned to heaven (the same calm attitude which he took at his evening prayer-meeting) was entreating God to "be over his house, to strengthen him, to pour down his Spirit on him, to bind up the bruised hearts,—to spare,—spare"——

Even the stout Squire Elderkin withdraws outside the door, that he may the better conceal his emotion.

The death happened on a Friday. The Squire, after a few faltering expressions of sympathy, asked regarding the burial. "Should it not be on Sunday?"

"Not on Sunday," says Mr. Johns; "God help me, Squire,—but this is not a work of necessity or mercy. Let it be on Monday."

"On Monday, then," said Elderkin,—"and let me take the arrangement of it all off your thought; and we will provide some one to preach for you on the Sabbath."

"No, Mr. Elderkin, no; I am always myself in the pulpit. I shall find courage there."

And he did. A stranger would not have suspected that the preacher's wife lay dead at home; the same unction and earnestness that had always characterized him; the same unyielding rigidity of doctrine: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

Once only—it was in the reading of the last hymn in the afternoon service—his voice broke, and he sat down half through. But as the song rose under the old roof of the meeting-house, his courage rose with it. He seemed ashamed of the transitory weakness. What right had he to bring private griefs to such a place? What right had the leader to faint, when the army were pressing forward to the triumph God had promised to the faithful? So it was in a kind of ecstasy that he rose, and joined with a firm, loud voice in the final doxology.