"Oh, father!—there bees a man all dead and dhrownded down there by the rocks beyant! And he bees so handsome and so much like a rale gintleman!—how could he dhround? Come down and see till him, father!"
The fisherman went down, and he and his rough mates removed the body and did their humble and ineffectual all to resuscitate a body from which the breath of life had long departed. Then the fisherman and his wife and his mates and little Shelah all mourned over the manly beauty that had been sacrificed, and wondered who he could possibly be, and where his kindred would mourn for him. It was only when Father Michael, the good old priest of the parish was summoned, that they could form any nearer idea of the personality of the drowned man. Then they knew, for Father Michael could read, as they could not, and he told them, from one of the cards in the pocket-book, that "his name had been Carlton Brand, and that he had belonged to Philadelphia, away over in America, where they used to be so free and happy, but where they were fighting, now, all the time, about the naygurs that didn't seem to him worth the throuble!"
They buried him, with such lamentations as they might have bestowed upon "one of their own," in consecrated ground in a little graveyard a mile away from the Hill, westward; and Father Michael gave the dead man the benefit of a benevolent doubt as to his religion, with the remark that "there were good Christians over in America, and this was one of them, maybe!" uttering a prayer for the repose of his soul that, if it bore him no nearer to the Beautiful Gate, certainly left him no farther away from it, while it fulfilled the behest of a simple and beautiful faith! This done, and a note despatched to his favorite journal, giving the name and place of burial of the unfortunate man, Father Michael felt, as he had reason to feel, that he had done his whole melancholy duty.
Whatever the quest of the American, it was ended: whatever had been the secret of his unrest, it was not a secret to the eyes that thenceforth watched over a destiny no longer temporal but eternal.
It has been suggested that Henry Fitzmaurice, the journalist, so strangely thrown into the company of the Philadelphian, so much pleased with his manner and impressed by his conversation, and so suddenly separated from him by an accident which seemed to have something of his own handiwork in its production,—was likely to bear with him, during life, a regret born of that circumstance. Such being the case, it was eminently natural that in giving a description of the accident to the despatch-steamer and the peril to her passengers, on the day following, in the Mail, he should have dwelt at some length on the sad fate of Mr. Carlton Brand, the American, alluded in terms of warm respect to the character which had briefly fallen under his observation, and felicitates the far-away friends of the unfortunate man, on the fact already made public in the Nation, that the body had been early recovered and received tender and honorable Christian burial.
CHAPTER XXII.
Pleasanton's advance on Culpeper—Crossing the Rappahannock—The Fight and the Calamity of Rawson's Cross-Roads—Taking of Culpeper—Pleasanton's Volunteer Aide—Townsend versus Coles—The Meeting of two who Loved each other—And the little Ride they took together.