The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

by Various

IV.

It was a week before Lizzie heard from Mrs. Ford. The letter, when it came, was very brief. Jack still lived. The wounds were three in number, and very serious; he was unconscious; he had not recognized her; but still the chances either way were thought equal. They would be much greater for his recovery nearer home; but it was impossible to move him. "I write from the midst of horrible scenes," said the poor lady. Subjoined was a list of necessary medicines, comforts, and delicacies, to be boxed up and sent.

For a while Lizzie found occupation in writing a letter to Jack, to be read in his first lucid moment, as she told Mrs. Ford. This lady's man-of-business came up from the village to superintend the packing of the boxes. Her directions were strictly followed; and in no point were they found wanting. Mr. Mackenzie bespoke Lizzie's admiration for their friend's wonderful clearness of memory and judgment. "I wish we had that woman at the head of affairs," said he. "'Gad, I'd apply for a Brigadier-Generalship."—"I'd apply to be sent South," thought Lizzie. When the boxes and letter were despatched, she sat down to await more news. Sat down, say I? Sat down, and rose, and wondered, and sat down again. These were lonely, weary days. Very different are the idleness of love and the idleness of grief. Very different is it to be alone with your hope and alone with your despair. Lizzie failed to rally her musings. I do not mean to say that her sorrow was very poignant, although she fancied it was. Habit was a great force in her simple nature; and her chief trouble now was that habit refused to work. Lizzie had to grapple with the stern tribulation of a decision to make, a problem to solve. She felt that there was some spiritual barrier between herself and repose. So she began in her usual fashion to build up a false repose on the hither side of belief. She might as well have tried to float on the Dead Sea. Peace eluding her, she tried to resign herself to tumult. She drank deep at the well of self-pity, but found its waters brackish. People are apt to think that they may temper the penalties of misconduct by self-commiseration, just as they season the long aftertaste of beneficence by a little spice of self-applause. But the Power of Good is a more grateful master than the Devil. What bliss to gaze into the smooth gurgling wake of a good deed, while the comely bark sails on with floating pennon! What horror to look into the muddy sediment which floats round the piratic keel! Go, sinner, and dissolve it with your tears! And you, scoffing friend, there is the way out! Or would you prefer the window? I'm an honest man forevermore.

One night Lizzie had a dream, a rather disagreeable one,—which haunted her during many waking hours. It seemed to her that she was walking in a lonely place, with a tall, dark-eyed man who called her wife. Suddenly, in the shadow of a tree, they came upon an unburied corpse. Lizzie proposed to dig him a grave. They dug a great hole and took hold of the corpse to lift him in; when suddenly he opened his eyes. Then they saw that he was covered with wounds. He looked at them intently for some time, turning his eyes from one to the other. At last he solemnly said, "Amen!" and closed his eyes. Then she and her companion placed him in the grave, and shovelled the earth over him, and stamped it down with their feet.

He of the dark eyes and he of the wounds were the two constantly recurring figures of Lizzie's reveries. She could never think of John without thinking of the courteous Leatherborough gentleman, too. These were the data of her problem. These two figures stood like opposing knights, (the black and the white,) foremost on the great chess-board of fate. Lizzie was the wearied, puzzled player. She would idly finger the other pieces, and shift them carelessly hither and thither; but it was of no avail: the game lay between the two knights. She would shut her eyes and long for some kind hand to come and tamper with the board; she would open them and see the two knights standing immovable, face to face. It was nothing new. A fancy had come in and offered defiance to a fact; they must fight it out. Lizzie generously inclined to the fancy, the unknown champion, with a reputation to make. Call her blaséeif you like, this little girl, whose record told of a couple of dances and a single lover, heartless, old before her time. Perhaps she deserves your scorn. I confess she thought herself ill-used. By whom? by what? wherein? These were questions Miss Crowe was not prepared to answer. Her intellect was unequal to the stern logic of human events. She expected two and two to make five: as why should they not for the nonce? She was like an actor who finds himself on the stage with a half-learned part and without sufficient wit to extemporize. Pray, where is the prompter? Alas, Elizabeth, that you had no mother! Young girls are prone to fancy that when once they have a lover, they have everything they need: a conclusion inconsistent with the belief entertained by many persons, that life begins with love. Lizzie's fortunes became old stories to her before she had half read them through. Jack's wounds and danger were an old story. Do not suppose that she had exhausted the lessons, the suggestions of these awful events, their inspirations, exhortations,—that she had wept as became the horror of the tragedy. No: the curtain had not yet fallen, yet our young lady had begun to yawn. To yawn? Ay, and to long for the afterpiece. Since the tragedy dragged, might she not divert herself with that well-bred man beside her?

Elizabeth was far from owning to herself that she had fallen away from her love. For my own part, I need no better proof of the fact than the dull persistency with which she denied it. What accusing voice broke out of the stillness? Jack's nobleness and magnanimity were the hourly theme of her clogged fancy. Again and again she declared to herself that she was unworthy of them, but that, if he would only recover and come home, she would be his eternal bond-slave. So she passed a very miserable month. Let us hope that her childish spirit was being tempered to some useful purpose. Let us hope so.

She roamed about the empty house with her footsteps tracked by an unlaid ghost. She cried aloud and said that she was very unhappy; she groaned and called herself wicked. Then, sometimes, appalled at her moral perplexities, she declared that she was neither wicked nor unhappy; she was contented, patient, and wise. Other girls had lost their lovers: it was the present way of life. Was she weaker than most women? Nay, but Jack was the best of men. If he would only come back directly, without delay, as he was, senseless, dying even, that she might look at him, touch him, speak to him! Then she would say that she could no longer answer for herself, and wonder (or pretend to wonder) whether she were not going mad. Suppose Mrs. Ford should come back and find her in an unswept room, pallid and insane? or suppose she should die of her troubles? What if she should kill herself?—dismiss the servants, and close the house, and lock herself up with a knife? Then she would cut her arm to escape from dismay at what she had already done; and then her courage would ebb away with her blood, and, having so far pledged herself to despair, her life would ebb away with her courage; and then, alone, in darkness, with none to help her, she would vainly scream, and thrust the knife into her temple, and swoon to death. And Jack would come back, and burst into the house, and wander through the empty rooms, calling her name, and for all answer get a death-scent! These imaginings were the more creditable or discreditable to Lizzie, that she had never read "Romeo and Juliet." At any rate, they served to dissipate time,—heavy, weary time,—the more heavy and weary as it bore dark foreshadowings of some momentous event. If that event would only come, whatever it was, and sever this Gordian knot of doubt!

The days passed slowly: the leaden sands dropped one by one. The roads were too bad for walking; so Lizzie was obliged to confine her restlessness to the narrow bounds of the empty house, or to an occasional journey to the village, where people sickened her by their dull indifference to her spiritual agony. Still they could not fail to remark how poorly Miss Crowe was looking. This was true, and Lizzie knew it. I think she even took a certain comfort in her pallor and in her failing interest in her dress. There was some satisfaction in displaying her white roses amid the apple-cheeked prosperity of Main Street. At last Miss Cooper, the Doctor's sister, spoke to her:—

"How is it, Elizabeth, you look so pale, and thin, and worn out? What you been doing with yourself? Falling in love, eh? It isn't right to be so much alone. Come down and stay with us awhile,—till Mrs. Ford and John come back," added Miss Cooper, who wished to put a cheerful face on the matter.

For Miss Cooper, indeed, any other face would have been difficult. Lizzie agreed to come. Her hostess was a busy, unbeautiful old maid, sister and housekeeper of the village physician. Her occupation here below was to perform the forgotten tasks of her fellow-men,—to pick up their dropped stitches, as she herself declared. She was never idle, for her general cleverness was commensurate with mortal needs. Her own story was, that she kept moving, so that folks couldn't see how ugly she was. And, in fact, her existence was manifest through her long train of good deeds,—just as the presence of a comet is shown by its tail. It was doubtless on the above principle that her visage was agitated by a perpetual laugh.

Meanwhile more news had been coming from Virginia. "What an absurdly long letter you sent John," wrote Mrs. Ford, in acknowledging the receipt of the boxes. "His first lucid moment would be very short, if he were to take upon himself to read your effusions. Pray keep your long stories till he gets well." For a fortnight the young soldier remained the same,—feverish, conscious only at intervals. Then came a change for the worse, which, for many weary days, however, resulted in nothing decisive. "If he could only be moved to Glenham, home, and old sights," said his mother, "I should have hope. But think of the journey!" By this time Lizzie had stayed out ten days of her visit.

One day Miss Cooper came in from a walk, radiant with tidings. Her face, as I have observed, wore a continual smile, being dimpled and punctured all over with merriment,—so that, when an unusual cheerfulness was super-diffused, it resembled a tempestuous little pool into which a great stone has been cast.

"Guess who's come," said she, going up to the piano, which Lizzie was carelessly fingering, and putting her hands on the young girl's shoulders. "Just guess!"

Lizzie looked up.

"Jack," she half gasped.

"Oh, dear, no, not that! How stupid of me! I mean Mr. Bruce, your Leatherborough admirer."

"Mr. Bruce! Mr. Bruce!" said Lizzie. "Really?"

"True as I live. He's come to bring his sister to the Water-Cure. I met them at the post-office."

Lizzie felt a strange sensation of good news. Her finger-tips were on fire. She was deaf to her companion's rattling chronicle. She broke into the midst of it with a fragment of some triumphant, jubilant melody. The keys rang beneath her flashing hands. And then she suddenly stopped, and Miss Cooper, who was taking off her bonnet at the mirror, saw that her face was covered with a burning flush.

That evening, Mr. Bruce presented himself at Doctor Cooper's, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. To Lizzie he was infinitely courteous and tender. He assured her, in very pretty terms, of his profound sympathy with her in her cousin's danger,—her cousin he still called him,—and it seemed to Lizzie that until that moment no one had begun to be kind. And then he began to rebuke her, playfully and in excellent taste, for her pale cheeks.

"Isn't it dreadful?" said Miss Cooper. "She looks like a ghost. I guess she's in love."

"He must be a good-for-nothing lover to make his mistress look so sad. If I were you, I'd give him up, Miss Crowe."

"I didn't know I looked sad," said Lizzie.

"You don't now," said Miss Cooper. "You're smiling and blushing. A'n't she blushing, Mr. Bruce?"

"I think Miss Crowe has no more than her natural color," said Bruce, dropping his eye-glass. "What have you been doing all this while since we parted?"

"All this while? it's only six weeks. I don't know. Nothing. What have you?"

"I've been doing nothing, too. It's hard work."

"Have you been to any more parties?"

"Not one."

"Any more sleigh-rides?"

"Yes. I took one more dreary drive all alone,—over that same road, you know. And I stopped at the farm-house again, and saw the old woman we had the talk with. She remembered us, and asked me what had become of the young lady who was with me before. I told her you were gone home, but that I hoped soon to go and see you. So she sent you her love"——

"Oh, how nice!" exclaimed Lizzie.

"Wasn't it? And then she made a certain little speech; I won't repeat it, or we shall have Miss Cooper talking about your blushes again."

"I know," cried the lady in question: "she said she was very"——

"Very what?" said Lizzie.

"Very h-a-n-d——what every one says."

"Very handy?" asked Lizzie. "I'm sure no one ever said that."

"Of course," said Bruce; "and I answered what every one answers."

"Have you seen Mrs. Littlefield lately?"

"Several times. I called on her the day before I left town, to see if she had any messages for you."

"Oh, thank you! I hope she's well."

"Oh, she's as jolly as ever. She sent you her love, and hoped you would come back to Leatherborough very soon again. I told her, that, however it might be with the first message, the second should be a joint one from both of us."

"You're very kind. I should like very much to go again.—Do you like Mrs. Littlefield?"

"Like her? Yes. Don't you? She's thought a very pleasing woman."

"Oh, she's very nice.—I don't think she has much conversation."

"Ah, I'm afraid you mean she doesn't backbite. We've always found plenty to talk about."

"That's a very significant tone. What, for instance?"

"Well, we have talked about Miss Crowe."

"Oh, you have? Do you call that having plenty to talk about?"

"We have talked about Mr. Bruce,—haven't we, Elizabeth?" said Miss Cooper, who had her own notion of being agreeable.

It was not an altogether bad notion, perhaps; but Bruce found her interruptions rather annoying, and insensibly allowed them to shorten his visit. Yet, as it was, he sat till eleven o'clock,—a stay quite unprecedented at Glenham.

When he left the house, he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went up to his sister's sitting-room.

"Why, Robert, where have you been all this while?" said Miss Bruce.

"At Dr. Cooper's."

"Dr. Cooper's? I should think you had! Who's Dr. Cooper?"

"Where Miss Crowe's staying."

"Miss Crowe? Ah, Mrs. Littlefield's friend! Is she as pretty as ever?"

"Prettier,—prettier,—prettier. Tara-ta! tara-ta!"

"Oh, Robert, do stop that singing! You'll rouse the whole house."

V.

Late one afternoon, at dusk, about three weeks after Mr. Bruce's arrival, Lizzie was sitting alone by the fire, in Miss Cooper's parlor, musing, as became the place and hour. The Doctor and his sister came in, dressed for a lecture.

"I'm sorry you won't go, my dear," said Miss Cooper. "It's a most interesting subject: 'A Year of the War.' All the battles and things described, you know."

"I'm tired of war," said Lizzie.

"Well, well, if you're tired of the war, we'll leave you in peace. Kiss me good-bye. What's the matter? You look sick. You are homesick, a'n't you?"

"No, no,—I'm very well."

"Would you like me to stay at home with you?"

"Oh, no! pray, don't!"

"Well, we'll tell you all about it. Will they have programmes, James? I'll bring her a programme.—But you really feel as if you were going to be ill. Feel of her skin, James."

"No, you needn't, Sir," said Lizzie. "How queer of you, Miss Cooper! I'm perfectly well."

And at last her friends departed. Before long the servant came with the lamp, ushering Mr. Mackenzie.

"Good evening, Miss," said he. "Bad news from Mrs. Ford."

"Bad news?"

"Yes, Miss. I've just got a letter stating that Mr. John is growing worse and worse, and that they look for his death from hour to hour.—It's very sad," he added, as Elizabeth was silent.

"Yes, it's very sad," said Lizzie.

"I thought you'd like to hear it."

"Thank you."

"He was a very noble young fellow," pursued Mr. Mackenzie.

Lizzie made no response.

"There's the letter," said Mr. Mackenzie, handing it over to her.

Lizzie opened it.

"How long she is reading it!" thought her visitor. "You can't see so far from the light, can you, Miss?"

"Yes," said Lizzie.—"His poor mother! Poor woman!"

"Ay, indeed, Miss,—she's the one to be pitied."

"Yes, she's the one to be pitied," said Lizzie. "Well!" and she gave him back the letter.

"I thought you'd like to see it," said Mackenzie, drawing on his gloves; and then, after a pause,—"I'll call again, Miss, if I hear anything more. Good night!"

Lizzie got up and lowered the light, and then went back to her sofa by the fire.

Half an hour passed; it went slowly; but it passed. Still lying there in the dark room on the sofa, Lizzie heard a ring at the door-bell, a man's voice and a man's tread in the hall. She rose and went to the lamp. As she turned it up, the parlor-door opened. Bruce came in.

"I was sitting in the dark," said Lizzie; "but when I heard you coming, I raised the light."

"Are you afraid of me?" said Bruce.

"Oh, no! I'll put it down again. Sit down."

"I saw your friends going out," pursued Bruce; "so I knew I should find you alone.—What are you doing here in the dark?"

"I've just received very bad news from Mrs. Ford about her son. He's much worse, and will probably not live."

"Is it possible?"

"I was thinking about that."

"Dear me! Well that's a sad subject. I'm told he was a very fine young man."

"He was,—very," said Lizzie.

Bruce was silent awhile. He was a stranger to the young officer, and felt that he had nothing to offer beyond the commonplace expressions of sympathy and surprise. Nor had he exactly the measure of his companion's interest in him.

"If he dies," said Lizzie, "it will be under great injustice."

"Ah! what do you mean?"

"There wasn't a braver man in the army."

"I suppose not."

"And, oh, Mr. Bruce," continued Lizzie, "he was so clever and good and generous! I wish you had known him."

"I wish I had. But what do you mean by injustice? Were these qualities denied him?"

"No indeed! Every one that looked at him could see that he was perfect."

"Where's the injustice, then? It ought to be enough for him that you should think so highly of him."

"Oh, he knew that," said Lizzie.

Bruce was a little puzzled by his companion's manner. He watched her, as she sat with her cheek on her hand, looking at the fire. There was a long pause. Either they were too friendly or too thoughtful for the silence to be embarrassing. Bruce broke it at last.

"Miss Crowe," said he, "on a certain occasion, some time ago, when you first heard of Mr. Ford's wounds, I offered you my company, with the wish to console you as far as I might for what seemed a considerable shock. It was, perhaps, a bold offer for so new a friend; but, nevertheless, in it even then my heart spoke. You turned me off. Will you let me repeat it? Now, with a better right, will you let me speak out all my heart?"

Lizzie heard this speech, which was delivered in a slow and hesitating tone, without looking up or moving her head, except, perhaps, at the words "turned me off." After Bruce had ceased, she still kept her position.

"You'll not turn me off now?" added her companion.

She dropped her hand, raised her head, and looked at him a moment: he thought he saw the glow of tears in her eyes. Then she sank back upon the sofa with her face in the shadow of the mantel-piece.

"I don't understand you, Mr. Bruce," said she.

"Ah, Elizabeth! am I such a poor speaker. How shall I make it plain? When I saw your friends leave home half an hour ago, and reflected that you would probably be alone, I determined to go right in and have a talk with you that I've long been wanting to have. But first I walked half a mile up the road, thinking hard,—thinking how I should say what I had to say. I made up my mind to nothing, but that somehow or other I should say it I would trust,—I do trust to your frankness, kindness, and sympathy, to a feeling corresponding to my own. Do you understand that feeling? Do you know that I love you? I do, I do, I do! You must know it. If you don't, I solemnly swear it. I solemnly ask you, Elizabeth, to take me for your husband."

While Bruce said these words, he rose, with their rising passion, and came and stood before Lizzie. Again she was motionless.

"Does it take you so long to think?" said he, trying to read her indistinct features; and he sat down on the sofa beside her and took her hand.

At last Lizzie spoke.

"Are you sure," said she, "that you love me?"

"As sure as that I breathe. Now, Elizabeth, make me as sure that I am loved in return."

"It seems very strange, Mr. Bruce," said Lizzie.

"What seems strange? Why should it? For a month I've been trying, in a hundred dumb ways, to make it plain; and now, when I swear it, it only seems strange!"

"What do you love me for?"

"For? For yourself, Elizabeth."

"Myself? I am nothing."

"I love you for what you are,—for your deep, kind heart,—for being so perfectly a woman."

Lizzie drew away her hand, and her lover rose and stood before her again. But now she looked up into his face, questioning when she should have answered, drinking strength from his entreaties for her replies. There he stood before her, in the glow of the firelight, in all his gentlemanhood, for her to accept or reject. She slowly rose and gave him the hand she had withdrawn.

"Mr. Bruce, I shall be very proud to love you," she said.

And then, as if this effort was beyond her strength, she half staggered back to the sofa again. And still holding her hand, he sat down beside her. And there they were still sitting when they heard the Doctor and his sister come in.

For three days Elizabeth saw nothing of Mr. Mackenzie. At last, on the fourth day, passing his office in the village, she went in and asked for him. He came out of his little back parlor with his mouth full and a beaming face.

"Good-day, Miss Crowe, and good news!"

"Good news?" cried Lizzie.

"Capital!" said he, looking hard at her, while he put on his spectacles. "She writes that Mr. John—won't you take a seat?—has taken a sudden and unexpected turn for the better. Now's the moment to save him; it's an equal risk. They were to start for the North the second day after date. The surgeon comes with them. So they'll be home—of course they'll travel slowly—in four or five days. Yes, Miss, it's a remarkable Providence. And that noble young man will be spared to the country, and to those who love him, as I do."

"I had better go back to the house and have it got ready," said Lizzie, for an answer.

"Yes, Miss, I think you had. In fact, Mrs. Ford made that request."

The request was obeyed. That same day Lizzie went home. For two days she found it her interest to overlook, assiduously, a general sweeping, scrubbing, and provisioning. She allowed herself no idle moment until bed-time. Then—But I would rather not be the chamberlain of her agony. It was the easier to work, as Mr. Bruce had gone to Leatherborough on business.

On the fourth evening, at twilight, John Ford was borne up to the door on his stretcher, with his mother stalking beside him in rigid grief, and kind, silent friends pressing about with helping hands.

"Home they brought her warrior dead,
She nor swooned nor uttered cry."

It was, indeed, almost a question, whether Jack was not dead. Death is not thinner, paler, stiller. Lizzie moved about like one in a dream. Of course, when there are so many sympathetic friends, a man's family has nothing to do,—except exercise a little self-control. The women huddled Mrs. Ford to bed; rest was imperative; she was killing herself. And it was significant of her weakness that she did not resent this advice. In greeting her, Lizzie felt as if she were embracing the stone image on the top of a sepulchre. She, too, had her cares anticipated. Good Doctor Cooper and his sister stationed themselves at the young man's couch.

The Doctor prophesied wondrous things of the change of climate; he was certain of a recovery. Lizzie found herself very shortly dealt with as an obstacle to this consummation. Access to John was prohibited. "Perfect stillness, you know, my dear," whispered Miss Cooper, opening his chamber-door on a crack, in a pair of very creaking shoes. So for the first evening that her old friend was at home Lizzie caught but a glimpse of his pale, senseless face, as she hovered outside the long train of his attendants. If we may suppose any of these kind people to have had eyes for aught but the sufferer, we may be sure that they saw another visage equally sad and white. The sufferer? It was hardly Jack, after all.

When Lizzie was turned from Jack's door, she took a covering from a heap of draperies that had been hurriedly tossed down in the hall: it was an old army-blanket. She wrapped it round her, and went out on the verandah. It was nine o'clock; but the darkness was filled with light. A great wanton wind—the ghost of the raw blast which travels by day—had arisen, bearing long, soft gusts of inland spring. Scattered clouds were hurrying across the white sky. The bright moon, careering in their midst, seemed to have wandered forth in frantic quest of the hidden stars.

Lizzie nestled her head in the blanket, and sat down on the steps. A strange earthy smell lingered in that faded old rug, and with it a faint perfume of tobacco. Instantly the young girl's senses were transported as they had never been before to those far-off Southern battle-fields. She saw men lying in swamps, puffing their kindly pipes, drawing their blankets closer, canopied with the same luminous dusk that shone down upon her comfortable weakness. Her mind wandered amid these scenes till recalled to the present by the swinging of the garden-gate. She heard a firm, well-known tread crunching the gravel. Mr. Bruce came up the path. As he drew near the steps, Lizzie arose. The blanket fell back from her head, and Bruce started at recognizing her.

"Hullo! You, Elizabeth? What's the matter?"

Lizzie made no answer.

"Are you one of Mr. Ford's watchers?" he continued, coming up the steps; "how is he?"

Still she was silent. Bruce put out his hands to take hers, and bent forward as if to kiss her. She half shook him off, and retreated toward the door.

"Good heavens!" cried Bruce; "what's the matter? Are you moonstruck? Can't you speak?"

"No,—no,—not to-night," said Lizzie, in a choking voice. "Go away,—go away!"

She stood holding the door-handle, and motioning him off. He hesitated a moment, and then advanced. She opened the door rapidly, and went in. He heard her lock it. He stood looking at it stupidly for some time, and then slowly turned round and walked down the steps.

The next morning Lizzie arose with the early dawn, and came down stairs. She went into the room where Jack lay, and gently opened the door. Miss Cooper was dozing in her chair. Lizzie crossed the threshold, and stole up to the bed. Poor Ford lay peacefully sleeping. There was his old face, after all,—his strong, honest features refined, but not weakened, by pain. Lizzie softly drew up a low chair, and sat down beside him. She gazed into his face,—the dear and honored face into which she had so often gazed in health. It was strangely handsomer: body stood for less. It seemed to Lizzie, that, as the fabric of her lover's soul was more clearly revealed,—the veil of the temple rent wellnigh in twain,—she could read the justification of all her old worship. One of Jack's hands lay outside the sheets,—those strong, supple fingers, once so cunning in workmanship, so frank in friendship, now thinner and whiter than her own. After looking at it for some time, Lizzie gently grasped it. Jack slowly opened his eyes. Lizzie's heart began to throb; it was as if the stillness of the sanctuary had given a sign. At first there was no recognition in the young man's gaze. Then the dull pupils began visibly to brighten. There came to his lips the commencement of that strange moribund smile which seems so ineffably satirical of the things of this world. O imposing spectacle of death! O blessed soul, marked for promotion! What earthly favor is like thine? Lizzie sank down on her knees, and, still clasping John's hand, bent closer over him.

"Jack,—dear, dear Jack," she whispered, "do you know me?"

The smile grew more intense. The poor fellow drew out his other hand, and slowly, feebly placed it on Lizzie's head, stroking down her hair with his fingers.

"Yes, yes," she murmured; "you know me, don't you? I am Lizzie, Jack. Don't you remember Lizzie?"

Ford moved his lips inaudibly, and went on patting her head.

"This is home, you know," said Lizzie; "this is Glenham. You haven't forgotten Glenham? You are with your mother and me and your friends. Dear, darling Jack!"

Still he went on, stroking her head; and his feeble lips tried to emit some sound. Lizzie laid her head down on the pillow beside his own, and still his hand lingered caressingly on her hair.

"Yes, you know me," she pursued; "you are with your friends now forever,—with those who will love and take care of you, oh, forever!"

"I'm very badly wounded," murmured Jack, close to her ear.

"Yes, yes, my dear boy, but your wounds are healing. I will love you and nurse you forever."

"Yes, Lizzie, our old promise," said Jack: and his hand fell upon her neck, and with its feeble pressure he drew her closer, and she wet his face with her tears.

Then Miss Cooper, awakening, rose and drew Lizzie away.

"I am sure you excite him, my dear. It is best he should have none of his family near him,—persons with whom he has associations, you know."

Here the Doctor was heard gently tapping on the window, and Lizzie went round to the door to admit him.

She did not see Jack again all day. Two or three times she ventured into the room, but she was banished by a frown, or a finger raised to the lips. She waylaid the Doctor frequently. He was blithe and cheerful, certain of Jack's recovery. This good man used to exhibit as much moral elation at the prospect of a cure as an orthodox believer at that of a new convert: it was one more body gained from the Devil. He assured Lizzie that the change of scene and climate had already begun to tell: the fever was lessening, the worst symptoms disappearing. He answered Lizzie's reiterated desire to do something by directions to keep the house quiet and the sick-room empty.

Soon after breakfast, Miss Dawes, a neighbor, came in to relieve Miss Cooper, and this indefatigable lady transferred her attention to Mrs. Ford. Action was forbidden her. Miss Cooper was delighted for once to be able to lay down the law to her vigorous neighbor, of whose fine judgment she had always stood in awe. Having bullied Mrs. Ford into taking her breakfast in the little sitting-room, she closed the doors, and prepared for "a good long talk." Lizzie was careful not to break in upon this interview. She had bidden her patroness good morning, asked after her health, and received one of her temperate osculations. As she passed the invalid's door, Doctor Cooper came out and asked her to go and look for a certain roll of bandages, in Mr. John's trunk, which had been carried into another room. Lizzie hastened to perform this task. In fumbling through the contents of the trunk, she came across a packet of letters in a well-known feminine handwriting. She pocketed it, and, after disposing of the bandages, went to her own room, locked the door, and sat down to examine the letters. Between reading and thinking and sighing and (in spite of herself) smiling, this process took the whole morning. As she came down to dinner, she encountered Mrs. Ford and Miss Cooper, emerging from the sitting-room, the good long talk being only just concluded.

"How do you feel, Ma'am?" she asked of the elder lady,—"rested?"

For all answer Mrs. Ford gave a look—I had almost said a scowl—so hard, so cold, so reproachful, that Lizzie was transfixed. But suddenly its sickening meaning was revealed to her. She turned to Miss Cooper, who stood pale and fluttering beside the mistress, her everlasting smile glazed over with a piteous, deprecating glance; and I fear her eyes flashed out the same message of angry scorn they had just received. These telegraphic operations are very rapid. The ladies hardly halted: the next moment found them seated at the dinner-table with Miss Cooper scrutinizing her napkin-mark and Mrs. Ford saying grace.

Dinner was eaten in silence. When it was over, Lizzie returned to her own room. Miss Cooper went home, and Mrs. Ford went to her son. Lizzie heard the firm low click of the lock as she closed the door. Why did she lock it? There was something fatal in the silence that followed. The plot of her little tragedy thickened. Be it so: she would act her part with the rest. For the second time in her experience, her mind was lightened by the intervention of Mrs. Ford. Before the scorn of her own conscience, (which never came,) before Jack's deepest reproach, she was ready to bow down,—but not before that long-faced Nemesis in black silk. The leaven of resentment began to work. She leaned back in her chair, and folded her arms, brave to await results. But before long she fell asleep. She was aroused by a knock at her chamber-door. The afternoon was far gone. Miss Dawes stood without.

"Elizabeth, Mr. John wants very much to see you, with his love. Come down very gently: his mother is lying down. Will you sit with him while I take my dinner?—Better? Yes, ever so much."

Lizzie betook herself with trembling haste to Jack's bedside.

He was propped up with pillows. His pale cheeks were slightly flushed. His eyes were bright. He raised himself, and, for such feeble arms, gave Lizzie a long, strong embrace.

"I've not seen you all day, Lizzie," said he. "Where have you been?"

"Dear Jack, they wouldn't let me come near you. I begged and prayed. And I wanted so to go to you in the army; but I couldn't. I wish, I wish I had!"

"You wouldn't have liked it, Lizzie. I'm glad you didn't. It's a bad, bad place."

He lay quietly, holding her hands and gazing at her.

"Can I do anything for you, dear?" asked the young girl. "I would work my life out. I'm so glad you're better!"

It was some time before Jack answered,—

"Lizzie," said he, at last, "I sent for you to look at you.—You are more wondrously beautiful than ever. Your hair is brown,—like—like nothing; your eyes are blue; your neck is white. Well, well!"

He lay perfectly motionless, but for his eyes. They wandered over her with a kind of peaceful glee, like sunbeams playing on a statue. Poor Ford lay, indeed, not unlike an old wounded Greek, who at falling dusk has crawled into a temple to die, steeping the last dull interval in idle admiration of sculptured Artemis.

"Ah, Lizzie, this is already heaven!" he murmured.

"It will be heaven when you get well," whispered Lizzie.

He smiled into her eyes:—

"You say more than you mean. There should be perfect truth between us. Dear Lizzie, I am not going to get well. They are all very much mistaken, I am going to die. I've done my work, Death makes up for everything. My great pain is in leaving you. But you, too, will die one of these days; remember that. In all pain and sorrow, remember that."

Lizzie was able to reply only by the tightening grasp of her hands.

"But there is something more," pursued Jack. "Life is as good as death. Your heart has found its true keeper; so we shall all three be happy. Tell him I bless him and honor him. Tell him God, too, blesses him. Shake hands with him for me," said Jack, feebly moving his pale fingers. "My mother," he went on,—"be very kind to her. She will have great grief, but she will not die of it. She'll live to great age. Now, Lizzie, I can't talk any more; I wanted to say farewell. You'll keep me farewell,—you'll stay with me awhile,—won't you? I'll look at you till the last. For a little while you'll be mine, holding my hands—so—until death parts us."

Jack kept his promise. His eyes were fixed in a firm gaze long after the sense had left them.

---

In the early dawn of the next day, Elizabeth left her sleepless bed, opened the window, and looked out on the wide prospect, still cool and dim with departing night. It offered freshness and peace to her hot head and restless heart. She dressed herself hastily, crept down stairs, passed the death-chamber, and stole out of the quiet house. She turned away from the still sleeping village and walked towards the open country. She went a long way without knowing it. The sun had risen high when she bethought herself to turn. As she came back along the brightening highway, and drew near home, she saw a tall figure standing beneath the budding trees of the garden, hesitating, apparently, whether to open the gate. Lizzie came upon him almost before he had seen her. Bruce's first movement was to put out his hands, as any lover might; but as Lizzie raised her veil, he dropped them.

"Yes, Mr. Bruce," said Lizzie, "I'll give you my hand once more,—in farewell."

"Elizabeth!" cried Bruce, half stupefied, "in God's name, what do you mean by these crazy speeches?"

"I mean well. I mean kindly and humanely to you. And I mean justice to my old—old love."

She went to him, took his listless hand, without looking into his wild, smitten face, shook it passionately, and then, wrenching her own from his grasp, opened the gate and let it swing behind her.

"No! no! no!" she almost shrieked, turning about in the path. "I forbid you to follow me!"

But for all that, he went in.

---

THE FROZEN HARBOR.

When Winter encamps on our borders,
And dips his white beard in the rills,
And lays his shield over highway, and field,
And pitches his tents on the hills,—
In the wan light I wake, and see on the lake,
Like a glove by the night-winds blown,
With fingers that crook up creek and brook,
His shining gauntlet thrown.

Then over the lonely harbor,
In the quiet and deadly cold
Of a single night, when only the bright,
Cold constellations behold,
Without trestle or beam, without mortise or seam,
It swiftly and silently spread
A bridge as of steel, which a Titan's heel
In the early light might tread.

Where Morning over the waters
Her web of splendor spun,
Till the wave, all a-twinkle with ripple and wrinkle,
Hung shimmering in the sun,—
Where the liquid lip at the breast of the ship
Whispered and laughed and kissed,
And the long, dark streamer of smoke from the steamer
Trailed off in the rose-tinted mist,—

Now all is gray desolation,
As up from the hoary coast,
Over snow-fields and islands her white arms in silence
Outspreading like a ghost,
Her feet in shroud, her forehead in cloud,
Pale walks the sheeted Dawn:
The sea's blue rim lies shorn and dim,
In the purple East withdrawn.

Where floated the fleets of commerce,
With proud breasts cleaving the tide,—
Like emmet or bug with its burden, the tug
Hither and thither plied,—
Where the quick paddles flashed, where the dropped anchor plashed,
And rattled the running chain,
Where the merchantman swung in the current, where sung
The sailors their far refrain,—

Behold! when ruddy Aurora
Peeps from her opening door,
Faint gleams of the sun like fairies run
And sport on a crystal floor;
Upon the river's bright panoply quivers
The noon's resplendent lance;
And by night through the narrows the moon's slanted arrows
Icily sparkle and glance.

Flown are the flocks of commerce,
Like wild swans hurrying south;
The lighter, belated, is frozen, full-freighted,
Within the harbor's mouth;
The brigantine, homeward bringing
Sweet spices from afar,
All night must wait with her fragrant freight
Below the lighthouse star.

The ships at their anchors are frozen,
From rudder to sloping chain:
Rock-like they rise: the low sloop lies
An oasis in the plain.
Like reeds here and there, the tall masts bare
Upspring: as on the edge
Of a lawn smooth-shaven, around the haven
The shipping grows like sedge.

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 débris 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.