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THE COWARD.

A NOVEL OF

SOCIETY AND THE FIELD

IN

1863.

BY HENRY MORFORD.

AUTHOR OF "SHOULDER-STRAPS," "THE DAYS OF SHODDY," ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
306 CHESTNUT STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for
the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania.

TO
THE PATRIOT PRINTERS OF AMERICA—
THE MEN WHO
HAVE FURNISHED MORE SOLDIERS
THAN ANY OTHER CLASS
IN COMPARISON WITH THE WHOLE NUMBER OF THEIR CRAFT,
TO
THE DEAD HEROES OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION
AND
THE LIVING ARMIES THAT YET BULWARK ITS HOPE,—
THIS
BLENDING OF THE FACTS AND FANCIES
OF
WAR-TIME,
IS
DEDICATED BY THEIR BROTHER-CRAFTSMAN,
THE AUTHOR.
New York City, July, 1864.

PREFACE.

Some persons, taking up this work with expectations more or less elevated, may possibly lay it down with disappointment after perusal, because it does not discuss with sharp personalities, as the title may have led them to suppose, the conduct of some of those well-known men connected with the Union Army, who have disgracefully faltered on the field. But the truth is that the Union Army has mustered very few cowards—so few, that a distinguished artist, not long ago called on to draw an ideal head of one of that class, said: "Really it is so long since I have seen a coward, that I scarcely know how to go about it!" The aim of the writer, eschewing all such tempting personalities, and quite as carefully avoiding all dry didactic discussion of the theme of courage and its opposite,—has principally been to illustrate the tendency of many men to misunderstand their own characters in certain particulars, and the inevitable consequence of their being misunderstood by the world, in one direction or the other. No apology is felt to be necessary for the length at which the scenery of the White Mountains, their actualities of interest and possibilities of danger, have been introduced into the narration; nor is it believed that the chain of connection with the great contest will be found the weaker because the glimpses given of it are somewhat more brief than in preceding publications of the same series. In those portions the writer has again occasion to acknowledge the assistance of the same capable hand which supplied much of the war data for both of his previous volumes.

New York City, July 1st, 1864.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

A June Morning of Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three—Glimpses of West Philadelphia—The Days before
Gettysburgh—The Two on the Piazza—Margaret Hayley and Elsie Brand—An Embrace and a
Difference—Foreshadowings of Carlton Brand, Brother and Lover [29]

CHAPTER II.

The Coming of Carlton Brand—Almost a Paladin of Balaclava—Brother and Sister—A Spasm of Shame—The
Confession—The Coward—How Margaret Hayley heard Many Words not intended for her—The
Rupture and the Separation [45]

CHAPTER III.

Kitty Hood and her School-house—Dick Compton going Soldiering—A Lover's Quarrel, a bit of Jealousy, and a
Threat—How Dick Compton met his supposed Rival—An Encounter, Sudden Death, and Kitty Hood's
terrible Discovery [61]

CHAPTER IV.

The Residence of the Brands—Robert Brand and Dr. Pomeroy—Radical and Copperhead—A passage-at-arms that ended
in a Quarrel—Elspeth Graeme the Housekeeper—The Shadow of Shame—Father and Daughter—The
falling of a parent's Curse [81]

CHAPTER V.

The Birth and Blood of the Brands—Pride that came down from the Crusades—Robert Brand as Soldier and Pension-Agent—How
Elsie raved, and how the Father's Curse seemed to be answered—Dr. James Holton, and the loss of a
Corpus Delicti [99]

CHAPTER VI.

The Residence of Dr. Pomeroy—Nathan Bladesden and Eleanor Hill—A kneeling Woman and a rigid Quaker—The ruin that a
Letter had wrought—A Parting that seemed eternal—Carlton Brand alive once more, and a Glance at the
fatal Letter [120]

CHAPTER VII.

A return to 1856—Nicholas Hill, Iron-merchant—His Death, his Daughter, and his Friend—How Dr. Pomeroy became a
Guardian and how he Discharged that duty—A ruin and an awakening—The market value of Dunderhaven
Stock in 1858 [137]

CHAPTER VIII.

What followed the revelation of Betrayal—A gleam of Hope for Eleanor Hill—A relative from California, a projected Voyage
, and a Disappointment—One more Letter—The broken thread resumed—Carlton Brand's farewell,
and an Elopement [164]

CHAPTER IX.

Dr. Pomeroy's purposed Pursuit—A plain Quaker who used very plain Language—Almost a Fight—How Mrs. Burton Hayley
consoled her Daughter, and how Margaret revealed the Past—A Compact—Dr. Pomeroy's Canine Adventure—Old
Elspeth once more—A Search that found Nothing. [174]

CHAPTER X.

Before and after Gettysburgh—The Apathy and Despair which preceded, and the Jubilation which followed—What Kitty Hood
said after the Battle, and what Robert Brand—Brother and Sister—A guest at the Fifth Avenue Hotel—A
fire-room Visit, an Interview, and a Departure for Europe [200]

CHAPTER XI.

Anomalies of the War for the Union—The Watering-place rush of 1863—A White Mountain party disembarking at
Littleton—Who filled the Concord coach—The Vanderlyns—Shoddy on its travels—Mr.
Brooks Cunninghame and his Family—"H. T." and an Excitement [219]

CHAPTER XII.

Landing at the Profile House—Halstead Rowan and Gymnastics—How that person saw Clara Vanderlyn and became a
Rival of "H. T."—The Full Moon in the Notch—Trodden Toes, a Name, a Voice, and a Rencontre—Margaret Hayley and Capt.
Hector Coles—The Old Man of the Mountain by Moonlight, and a Mystery [237]

CHAPTER XIII.

Miss Clara Vanderlyn and her Pet Bears—A misadventure and a Friendly Hand in time—The question of Courage—Halstead
Rowan and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame on Geography—The Dead Washington, the Flume and the Pool—With the personal
relations weaving at that juncture. [255]

CHAPTER XIV.

A disaster to Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame—Exit into the bottom of the Pool—Nobody that could swim, and Margaret
Hayley in Excitement—"H. T." in his element, in two senses—Another Introduction and a new Hero—Scenes in the
Profile parlor—Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn—The Insult [279]

CHAPTER XV.

How Halstead Rowan arranged that expected Duel—Ten-pins versus bloodshed—Some anxiety about identity—The "H. T."
initials, again—A farewell to the Brooks Cunninghames—An hour on Echo Lake, with a Rhapsody and a strangely-interested
Listener [298]

CHAPTER XVI.

Cloud and Storm at the Profile—Sights and Sensations of a rainy-day ride to the Crawford—Horace Townsend
and Halstead Rowan once more together—Unexpected Arrivals—A cavalcade of Miserables—An ascent of Mount
Washington, with Equestrianism and War-whoops extraordinary [323]

CHAPTER XVII.

Horace Townsend with a Lady in charge—An adventure over the "Gulf of Mexico"—Clara Vanderlyn in deadly
peril—A moment of horror—Halstead Rowan and a display of the Comanche riding—Townsend's eclipse—The
return to the Crawford—Margaret Hayley again, and a Conversation overheard [348]

CHAPTER XVIII.

Horace Townsend and Margaret Hayley—A strange Rencontre in the Parlor—Another Rencontre, equally strange
but less pleasant—How Clara Vanderlyn faded away from the Mountains—And how the Comanche Rider
"played baby" and disappeared [370]

CHAPTER XIX.

A strange Character at breakfast—"The Rambler," and his Antecedents—What Horace Townsend heard about
Fate—Going up to Pic-nic on Mount Willard—The Plateau, the Rope and the Swing—Spreading the Banquet—The
dinner-call and a cry which answered it—A fearful situation. [392]

CHAPTER XX.

Suspense in danger, in two Senses—Horace Townsend with a Swing-rope—An invitation to Captain Hector
Coles—A fearful piece of Amateur Gymnastics—Going down into the Schute—Success or Failure?—The event,
and Margaret Hayley's madness—Two unfortunate Declarations [410]

CHAPTER XXI.

The bearer of a Disgraced Name in England—A strange Quest and a strange Unrest—Hurrying over to Ireland—Too
late for the Packet—The little Despatch-steamer—Henry Fitzmaurice, the journalist—The peril of the Emerald,
and the end of all Quests save one [432]

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 [452]

CHAPTER XXIII.

Once more at West Philadelphia—September and Change—Last glimpses of Kitty Hood and Dick Compton—Robert Brand
and his invited Guest—The news of Death—Old Elspeth Graeme as a Seeress—The dispatch from Alexandria—The
Quest of Brand and Margaret Hayley [478]

CHAPTER XXIV.

In the Hospital at Alexandria—The wounded Man and his Nurse—Who was Horace Townsend?—A Mystery
explained—How Eleanor Hill went back to Dr. Pomeroy's—One word more of the Comanche Rider—Conclusion [490]

THE COWARD.

CHAPTER I.

A June Morning of Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-three—Glimpses of West Philadelphia—The Days before Gettysburg—the Two on the Piazza—Margaret Hayley and Elsie Brand—An Embrace and a Difference—Foreshadowings of Carlton Brand, Brother and Lover.

A wide piazza, with the columns made of such light tracery in scrolled plank-work that they seemed to be almost unreal and gave an appearance of etheriality to the whole front of the house. The piazza, flecked over with the golden June sunshine that stole down between the branches of the tall trees standing in front and shading the house, and that crept in through the network of twine and climbing roses clambering almost up to the roof from the balustrade below. The house to which the piazza adjoined, large, built of wood in that half Flemish and half Elizabethan style which has of late years been made popular through cheap books on cottage architecture and the illustrations in agricultural newspapers,—two and a half stories in height, with a double gabled front that belonged to the one, elaborate cornices and work over the piazza that belonged to the other, and a turret in the centre that belonged to neither. A wide, tall door opening from the piazza, and windows also opening upon it, sweeping down quite to the floor. Altogether a house which approached more nearly to the "composite" order of architecture so much affected by wealthy Americans, than to any one set down in the books by a particular designation; and yet shapely and imposing, and showing that if the most unimpeachable taste had not presided over the erection, yet wealth had been lavishly expended and all the modern graces and ornaments freely supplied.

In front of the house, and sweeping down to the road that ran within a hundred feet, a grassed lawn lying in the lovely green of early summer, only broken at irregular intervals by the dozen of trees of larger and smaller sizes, round which the earth had been artistically made to swell so as to do away with any appearance of newness and create the impression that the roundness had been caused by the bursting of the trees farther out of the ground through many years of vigorous growth. Beneath one of the largest of the trees—a maple, with the silver sheen almost equally divided between its bark and its glossy leaves, a long wooden bench or settee, with two or three sofa-cushions thrown carelessly upon it, as if it formed at times a favorite lounge for a reader or a smoker. On the piazza a triad of chairs, irregularly placed and all unoccupied. One of the two folding doors leading into the halls from the piazza, wide open, as became the season, and the other half closed as if a single puff of summer breeze coming through the hall had become exhausted before closing it entirely. One of the windows opening from the piazza into what seemed to be the better part of the house, closed entirely; and the other, with the shutters "bowed" or half open, permitting a peep into a large parlor or sitting-room, with rich carpet and handsome furniture, but kept dusky under the impression (more or less reasonable) that thereby additional coolness would be secured.

Near the house, on both sides, other houses of corresponding pretension though displaying great variety in style of architecture; and in front, across the wide road, still others showing to the right and left, and the whole appearance of the immediate neighborhood evidencing that it was neither country nor city, but a blending of both, suburban, and a chosen spot for the residences of those who did business in the great city and wished to be near it, and who possessed means and taste to make so pleasant a selection. Still farther away in front, as seen between the other houses and shrubbery, and stretching off southward in a long rolling sweep, rich agricultural country, with some of the hay-crop yet ungathered, broad fields of grain receiving the last ripening kiss of the sun before yielding to the sickle or the reaping-machine, and fruit-trees already beginning to be golden with the apples, pears and peaches glimmering amid the leaves. A quiet, gentle scene, with evident wealth to gild it and perfect repose to lend it character; and over all the warm sun of a June morning resting like a benediction, and a slight shadow of golden haze in the air softening every object in the perspective. Occasionally a pedestrian figure moving slowly along one of the foot-paths that bordered the wide road; and anon a farm-wagon loaded with early produce and on its way to market, rumbling by with such a sleepy expression on the face of the driver and such lollings of the ears of the full-fed and lazy horses, that the episode of its passage rather added to than detracted from the slumberous quiet of the prospect.

Then another passage, very different and not at all in keeping with any of the points that have before been noted. An officer in full uniform, with the front of his chasseur cap thrown high in defiance of the glare of the sunshine, spurring by on a high-stepping and fast-trotting horse, eastward towards the city, with such life and haste in every movement of himself and the animal he bestrode as to momentarily dash the whole view with unquiet. Then the equestrian figure out of sight and the beat of his horse's hoofs heard no longer; and the scene relapsing into that languor born of the June morning verging rapidly towards noon.

Then a sudden sound, still more discordant with the drowsy peace of the hour than the sight of the spurring soldier, and still more painfully suggestive of war in the land of peace. The quick, sharp rattle of a snare-drum, but a little space removed, and apparently passing down one of the lateral roads in the neighborhood, dying away with a light tap into the distance a moment after, and quiet coming back again yet more markedly after so incongruous an interruption.

The place, West Philadelphia, half a mile or more beyond the Schuylkill, not far from the line traversed beyond the bridge by the Market Street cars, and near the intersection of that branch of the main artery known as the Darby Road,—in the outer edge of that beautiful little section with its tall trees and plats of natural green, out of and into which the shrieking monsters of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad dart every hour in the day with freight and passengers to and from the Great West. The time, late in June, 1863, a few days before Gettysburg, when the long-threatened invasion of the North by the rebels had become for the moment an accomplished fact, when Lee and Ewell had crossed the Potomac, swept on through Upper Maryland, entered Pennsylvania, devastated the farms and carried away the stock of the farmers on the border, laid York under a contribution, burned the barracks at Carlisle, and threatened every hour to capture Harrisburgh and force the passage of the Susquehanna. When women and children, and by far too many of the able-bodied inhabitants who should have shown more pride if they indeed possessed no courage, had fled away from the Seat of Government of the Keystone State, and the public records were following them to prevent their falling into the hands of an enemy known to be destructive and revengeful, and for the moment believed to be irresistible. When the rebels themselves boasted that they were about to teach the North all the horrors of war that had fallen upon the South in the long contest,—and that in a few days they would water their cavalry-horses in the Delaware, if they did not achieve the same success at the very banks of the Hudson; and when the newspapers of New York and Philadelphia, for the moment completely discouraged, gave up the line of defence of the Susquehanna, and gravely debated, whether a check could indeed be made at the Delaware, with the loss of the Quaker City, or whether the great struggle must at last be transferred to the Hudson hills of New Jersey. When the Reserves were mustering in Philadelphia, and the Coal Regiments forming in the haunts of the sturdy miners. When the Pennsylvania coal-mines were to be set on fire by the invader, and left to burn on until all the fuel of the nation was destroyed, if the "great conflagration" of the whole earth did not follow as a result. When more placards calling for the defence of the State, were exhibited in the neighborhood of old Independence Hall, than had ever shown there, inviting the idle to amusement, in the most prosperous seasons of opera, theatre and concert-saloon—drums beating at every corner, brass bands blowing on every square, patriotic appeals and efforts to recruit on every hand, and yet the people apparently lying under bodily apathy or mental paralysis. When Governor Seymour, of New York, and Governor Parker, of New Jersey, waiving the political question for the moment, were calling out the troops of those States to the defence of Pennsylvania; and when the militia of the city of New York and the returned nine-months volunteers of New Jersey were showing themselves equally ready to respond to the call. When the Army of the Potomac seemed for the moment to be nothing, even for the defence of the North, Hooker discredited, no successor discovered, public confidence lost, the very darkest day of the struggle at hand, and no man able or willing to predict what might be the extent of disaster reached before the rolling back of the tide of invasion from the homes of the loyal States.

Such were the place, the time, the surroundings, and the atmosphere (so to speak) of the house of the blended Flemish and Elizabethan styles of architecture, at West Philadelphia, of which, thus far, only the outward aspects have been presented. Yet there may be an inexcusable neglect of the proprieties, in presenting a house, its green lawn, shady trees, and even the pleasant landscape stretching away in front of it, before those living figures which would certainly have attracted the attention of an observer in advance of any of the inanimate beauties of art or nature.

Those figures were two in number, both standing on the piazza, very near the trellis of climbing roses, and where the flecks of sunshine fell through the leaves upon them and dashed them with little dots and lines of moving light, as well as the floor upon which they stood. Both were girls—both young—both beautiful; at least each possessed that combination of features, form and manner, making her very pleasing to the casual observer, and certain to be reckoned beautiful by some one admitted to a closer knowledge of the spirit enshrined within. They were evidently dear friends; for as they stood near the trellis, and the hand of the taller of the two plucked a half-open rose from one of the clusters, and she playfully tried to coax it to a fuller opening by breathing caressingly upon it and separating its clinging leaves with her dainty fingers,—the arm of the other was around her waist, and both the trim and graceful forms were slightly swaying backward and forward in that pleasant, idle, school-girl motion which the grown woman does not easily forget until it has given the "fidgets" to half her elder acquaintances.

The taller and perhaps by a year the elder—she of the rose—was the daughter of the mistress of that pleasant summer paradise, born to wealth and position, and her birth registered some two-and-twenty years before in the predecessor of the heavy family Bible with its golden clasps, which lay in state in the parlor so near her, as Margaret Hayley. She was a little above the average height of womanhood, and might have seemed too tall for grace but for the exquisite rounding of the lithe form, the matchless fall of a pair of sloping shoulders that could not probably be matched within a radius of an hundred miles, the graceful carriage of a neck that would have been long if less elegantly poised, the beauty in shape and spring in motion of the Arab foot under which the water would have run as easily as beneath a bridge, and the supple delicacy of the long taper fingers with their rose-tinted nails, which seemed perfect and high-blooded enough to have a mission of playing among heart-strings as the fingers of others might do among the chords of a harp.

In feature the young girl had quite as many claims to attention. The hair was very dark and very profuse—so near to black that it needed the sunlight before the golden shadows in the dark brown became fully apparent—swept plainly down on either side, in the madonna fashion, from a brow that was very pure, high and clear. The face was handsomely moulded, rather long than broad, as beseemed the figure, rather pale than ruddy, though with a dash of healthy color in each cheek that belied any momentary suspicion of ill health; the nose a little long and somewhat decided, but very classic in outline and finely cut at the nostril; the eyes dark—so dark that a careless observer would have lost their brown and called them black, and their expression a little reserved if not sad and even sometimes severe; the mouth small and well-shaped, with the lips as delicately tinted as the faintest blush-rose in the cluster near her, but a shade too thin for the exhibition of exuberant passion, and showing a slight curl of pride at the corners of the upper; the chin rounded, full, and forming a pleasant point for the eye to rest upon as it descended from the face to study the contour of neck and shoulders. The first appreciative glance at her was certain to be followed by the suppressed exclamation: "How very handsome!" and the second by a thought that the lips did not syllable: "How very proud and queenly!" It might have needed many more than a third, before the gazer could go to the full depth of a very marked character, and say how much of that queenly bearing might be ready to bend at last to the magic touch of the softer passions, and how much of that evident goodness and firmness might be employed in conveying happiness to others than herself. Among her peculiarities, she seemed to despise stripes, plaids, sprigs, spots, and the other endless varieties of color in material; and the lawn which swept that morning around her erect figure was of a neutral tint and as devoid of spot as were arms, ears and neck of any ornament in jewelry except a small cameo at the throat, a slight gold chain around the neck and descending to the bosom, and a single cluster diamond sparkling on the forefinger of the right-hand that was dallying with the spirit hidden among the rose-leaves.

No more telling contrast to the tall, majestic girl could well have been supplied, than her neighbor and dear friend, Elsie Brand (Elspeth, baptismally, for reasons that will hereafter develop themselves, but always called Elsie by those admitted to the least intimacy.) She was at least four inches shorter than Miss Hayley, round and rather plump, though very graceful in figure, with a chubby face, ruddy cheeks, piquant nose, merry blue eyes, pouting red lips, full hair coming low down on the forehead and of that pale gold which the old Scotch poets immortalized as "yellow," in so many of their lays of the bardic era. Pretty, beyond question, but more good and attractive-looking than beautiful; and if a second look at Margaret Hayley would have induced an observation having reference to her pride, a second at Elsie Brand was certain to bring out the thought if not the speech: "What a charming, good little girl!" Perhaps a third, with persons not too severely in training for the great Olympian races of morality, was very likely to create such a sensation as one experiences in gazing at a lusciously ripe peach, having particular reference to the pulpy red lips with their funny pout and kissable look, and ending in a wish that the crimson love-apples of the modern Hesperides were not quite so zealously guarded.

Elsie had not yet passed her twenty-second birthday, though she had been "of age" for a good many twelvemonths, in the estimation of those who had come near enough to her to feel the beating of her warm heart. Doctor James Holton, graduate of the Pennsylvania Medical College, and lately a student with one who had been a student with David Hosack, held his own peculiar estimation of Elsie Brand, and had almost been driven into rank atheism from the necessity of both holding and proving that the theory of our springing from one common father and mother could not possibly be correct, as the clay of which Elsie was made had been so very different—so much purer, sweeter and better—from that employed in the moulding of ordinary mortals!

For some minutes the two young girls had been standing in silence, Margaret engaged with experiments on her opening rose and Elsie with one arm around her and lazily observing the operation—both apparently full of that indolent enjoyment born of ease, content, and the languid air of the summer morning. Then the little one spoke:

"Margaret, do you know of what I have been thinking for the last two minutes?"

"Haven't any machine by which I could pry into the droll secrets of your brain, Elsie, my dear!" answered the taller, pleasantly, but with no smile upon her lips meanwhile, and apparently with all her attention yet absorbed in her horticultural experiment.

"Shall I tell you?" queried Elsie.

"Certainly, pet, if you like!" was the reply, the tone, as well as the word of endearment, showing indefinably that Margaret Hayley thought of herself as a woman and yet of her companion (of nearly the same age) as little more than a child.

"I was thinking," said the little girl, "how much of character is sometimes shown in the action of a moment, and how very different we are."

"Who thought your little head was so philosophical, Elsie?" answered Margaret, and this time she for a moment deserted her rose and looked around with a pleasant smile. "Well, the application of your thought to yourself and to me?"

"Oh," said the little one. "It was only about the rose. I should have plucked it, if I plucked it at all, and enjoyed it as it was. You are trying to make something else out of it, and yet show no wish to destroy the flower. A cruel woman—different from either of us, I hope—would probably be plucking off the leaves one by one and throwing them away, without caring how much pain she might be inflicting on the life of the flower, hidden away down somewhere in its heart."

"A very pretty idea, upon my word!" said Margaret, ceasing to blow upon and pluck at the leaves, and turning upon her companion a countenance showing something like surprised admiration. "And what do you make of my character, Elsie, as shown by my handling of the rose?"

"You must not be angry with me, Margaret," answered the young girl, a little in the spirit of deprecation. "But you see I should have been satisfied with the rose as it was, and the other would have been cruelly dissatisfied with it in any shape, and you——"

"Well, dear? I——"

"You showed that you were not entirely satisfied with every thing as it was, and that you had a little self-will leading you to force things to be as you chose, by trying to make that poor little flower outrun the course of nature and bloom before it was quite ready."

"I think you are right, Elsie," said Margaret, nodding her head in that slight and repeated manner indicative of answering the mind within quite as much as any observation from without. "I am not satisfied with every thing in the world, Elsie. I am not cruel, I hope and believe; but I am sharper, harder, more requiring than you, and consequently not formed for half so much true happiness. I do feel like forcing things to be what I require, sometimes, and then I suppose I grow unamiable."

"You are never any thing else than a dear good girl, with a wiser head than my rattle-pate, and my own sweet sister that is to be!" and the arm of the speaker went still more closely around the slight waist it encircled. A blush as delicately roseate as the first flushings of dawn crept over the more classic face that bent above her own, the lips above came down to meet those pouting below, and the two young girls were kissing and embracing as if they had been two lovers of opposite sexes but very much of one opinion as to the best office of the lips. Any delicately-nerved old bachelor who should have happened to pass in front of the house at that moment and catch a glimpse of the scene just then enacted on the piazza, would certainly have fainted away on the spot, at the idea of such a waste of the most delicious of "raw material."

"You may have the rose for your lesson—you see I have not spoiled it, after all," said Margaret, when the kiss had been given and the rosy flush died away from her own cheek.

"To give to Carlton?" asked Elsie, as she held out her hand for it.

"No, Carlton must come after his own roses!" was the reply, with the least dash of pride in the curling of the upper lip.

"And pluck them himself?" asked saucy Elsie.

"Certainly!"

"No matter where he finds them growing—on tree, or on cheek, or on lips!" continued the young girl, with a light laugh.

For an instant the same flush rose again on the cheek of Margaret Hayley; then she forced it away, smiled, and said:

"Certainly! why not? Carlton Brand kisses me, sometimes, and I have more than once kissed him back. What is that to you, sauce-box, when we are engaged to be married?"

"What is that to me? Every thing! Joy—happiness—to know that I am going to have so dear a sister!" cried the little one, throwing both her arms, this time, around the pliant waist of Margaret and hugging her in a perfect transport of delight, which seemed quite shared in, though more tranquilly, by the object of the demonstration.

The saddest, cruellest thing in all the lyric drama is the blast of De Sylva's horn on Ernani's wedding morning, calling him in one instant from happy love to dishonor or death. Neither in romance nor in nature should such sudden transitions occur. Alas, for humanity! they do occur in both, not occasionally but habitually. The Duchess of Richmond's ball—then Waterloo. De Joinville springs on board his flag-ship to sail for the attack on Vera Cruz, in the very ball dress in which he has been dancing the whole night through with the republican belles at Castle Garden. The Pall is over every thing of earth: how sadly and how inevitably it droops above the Banner! No scene upon earth could have been more exquisitely peaceful, and few could have been lovelier, than that which surrounded and comprehended those two fair girls in their embrace upon the piazza. Wealth, youth, beauty, good feeling, happiness—all were there; and love blent with friendship, for was not the embrace, given by Elsie Brand and accepted by Margaret Hayley, both given and accepted quite as much for her brother's sake as her own? It was fitting, then, according to the sad fitness of earth, that the element of discord should enter into the peaceful and the beautiful.

The officer spurred by, as we have seen him do, gazing only with our incorporeal eyes. Both the young girls, just releasing each other from their embrace, saw the dark cloud of war sweeping between them and the sunlit grain fields. Elsie Brand shuddered and drew back, as if the incongruity jarred her nature. Margaret Hayley instantly lifted her proud neck the higher, as if something in her nature sympathized with every suggestion of the struggle, and as if she was, indeed, insensibly riding on with the hurrying horseman.

"And what does the shudder mean, little one?" asked Margaret, who had plainly distinguished it at the moment of release.

"I hate war, and every thing connected with it!" was the reply, the tone almost petulant.

"And I do not hate it, painful as it may be in many particulars," said Margaret. "Force and energy are the noblest developments in life. Bravery is the nearest possible approach to that divine character which knows no superior and consequently fears none."

"Nearer to the divine than love?" asked the little one.

Just for one instant, again, that roseate tint on the cheek of Margaret, as she said: "Nobler, if not nearer to the divine; and sorry as I must be to see the bloodshed caused by a civil war in my native land, I am almost glad that it has occurred, sometimes, as a means of rousing the sluggish pulses of men who would otherwise have stagnated in trade and pleasure, and proving that we yet possess something of the hero spirit of old."

"And I am sorry for it all the while, night and day, in my prayers and in my dreams," answered Elsie Brand, with a sigh. "Hark!" as the tap of the drum came across from the lateral road before-mentioned. "There is another reminder of the curse, and one that comes nearer home. Do you remember, Margaret, that I shall soon have a brother, and you a lover, separated from us and in terrible danger? They say Harrisburgh must be taken, unless a very large body of troops can reach it at once. The Reserves will probably go on, to-night, and Carlton will probably accept his old commission again. I do want him to do his duty, Margaret, if it is his duty; but I hope that he will not think so—that he will not go away."

"And I hope that he will!" answered Margaret, her tall form drawn up to its full height, and a look of stern pride upon her face that could not very well be mistaken.

"To go into danger—perhaps to death?" asked Elsie, looking sadly at the proud Sibylline face.

"To a thousand deaths, if necessary, rather than towards the least suspicion of a want of true manhood!"

"Ah, you do not know the trembling fear of a sister's love!" said Elsie, with a sigh.

"I know a love fifty times deeper!" said Margaret, the pride still on her face, and yet that ever-returning flush coming up again to say that if love had not conquered pride it had at least divided the dominion. "Listen, Elsie Brand, to some words that you may as well understand now as ever. There is no one near to hear us, and so it is almost like speaking before heaven alone. I love your brother, deeply, devotedly, with all the power of my nature—so devotedly that if that love should be wrenched away from my heart by any circumstance, I know that my life would thenceforth be but one long, wretched mockery of existence. Happy natures like yours, Elsie, do not know the absolute agony that lies in such love. And yet I could give up that love, and my life with it, and would do so, before I would live, love, and yet despise!"

"Despise?—are you speaking of Carlton—of my brother?" asked the young girl, apparently a little lost in the mysterious energy of her companion's words.

"I said that I could not despise," Margaret Hayley went on. "I must not, or we have no future. Do you know that I should have reverenced your brother more, even if I did not love him better, if he had not refused the commission in the army tendered him at the commencement of the war? I might have wept, perhaps mourned—but I should have idolized. Now, I only love a mortal like myself, where I might have been worshipping a hero!"

"Or sobbing over a grave!" said Elsie, with a sigh which told how easily she might have been brought to illustrate the word she used.

"What then!" was the quick reply of Margaret. "The glory would have been his—the loss and grief would have been mine, and I could have borne them. But he did not choose to enter the struggle, prominent as he had once been in military movements. He had the excuse of business and occupation, and I have tried to believe that he needed no other."

"Needed?—what do you mean, Margaret?" cried Elsie Brand in a tone and with a movement of starting back which evidenced both pain and alarm.

"It is a painful thing, but I must say it, to you, as I do not know that I could say it to him," pursued Margaret. "I mean, that I have tried to believe that there was no flaw in my idol—that Carlton Brand, who held every pulse of my woman's heart responsive to his touch—did not lack the one manly virtue of courage!"

"And would you dare to believe my brother—the man you have pretended to love—a coward?" There was something vexed and sharp, almost angry, in Elsie's tone, now, that did not promise another immediate embrace like that of a few moments previous. Margaret Hayley saw the expression of her face, but neither blenched before it nor seemed to feel any anger at the manifestation.

"Elsie Brand," she said, her words slow, measured, and with a cadence that was somehow inexpressibly pained and mournful, "I am no school-girl, and I am speaking words that I mean. I know your brother to be patriotic, I know him to be in high health, athletic, vigorous and determined; and have sometimes believed that if he had possessed that one requisite, animal courage, he would long ago have been fighting the foes of the republic. Grieve as I may to part with him, I am glad you believe that he is going with the Reserves. He had his choice, before, and I let my own heart instead of my reason have sway, and did not question its propriety. But were he to hang back now, when his native State is invaded and every arm necessary to drive back the rebels from Pennsylvania soil, I should know that he was a coward!"

"I don't like you, Margaret Hayley, when your face looks so and you talk in that manner!" said the little girl. "But I will not quarrel with you. Carlton is going with the Reserves, and some day when he is killed or you hear how he has shamed all the rest with his bravery, you will be sorry for the words you have just spoken!" Just then the little yellow-haired girl was the Sibyl, and her prophecy went upon record with the wild words of Margaret, to be afterwards remembered—how sadly!

"No—do not be angry with me, Elsie," said Margaret, taking the hand that had been temporarily released. "You have no cause. I have been speaking against my own heart all the while, much more than against the man whom I truly love. I know him to be noble and true, and I will believe him brave. Are you satisfied? Kiss me!" and the proud, statuesque face once more lost its gravity, to bring back all the joyousness into the rounder and merrier one from which it had temporarily departed.

The light summer jockey-hat of Elsie lay just within the door, on a chair. With a quick glance at the watch hidden under her waist-riband, she stepped within the door, threw on her hat, and was about to terminate her somewhat prolonged morning-call, when Margaret took it off again, dropped it into one of the vacant chairs, and said:

"No—do not go away. You have nothing to do at home—mother has gone down to the city for the day, you know, and I shall be lonely. We shall have some lunch—you may call it dinner if it will taste any better,—very soon. Stay till the afternoon—cannot you do so, just as well as not?"

"I suppose so—no, I must see Carlton—yes, though, Carlton will be quite as likely to come here first as to go home, if he has arranged to go away—yes, I will stay if you wish it so much!" rapidly answered the little one.

"That is a good girl," said Margaret Hayley, just as she might have patted a school hobby-de-hoy on the head. "Now run into the parlor and get the very nicest book you can find, draw the easy-chair out of the hall, and enjoy yourself the best you can for just twenty minutes, while I go down to the kitchen, in ma's place, and see what progress our new Dutch cook has been making."

She disappeared with the words, and her injunctions were acted upon almost as rapidly. In half a minute Elsie had the arm-chair out of the hall, and an illustrated work off one of the tables in the parlor, and was prepared for her short period of indolent enjoyment.

CHAPTER II.

The Coming of Carlton Brand—Almost a Paladin of Balaklava—Brother and Sister—A Spasm of Shame—The Confession—The Coward—How Margaret Hayley heard Many Words not intended for her—The Rupture and the Separation.

Not long was the young girl, left at the close of the last chapter bodily ensconced in an easy-chair on the broad piazza, and mentally absorbed in the attractions of one of the choicest books in Margaret Hayley's collection, allowed to pursue her reading undisturbed. Not two minutes had elapsed when a horseman, riding a chestnut horse of handsome appearance and fine action, came rapidly up from the direction of the city, dismounted with the same practised grace that he had shown when in the saddle, threw the rein of his horse over one of the posts standing near the gate, opened that gate and came up the walk, without attracting the attention of the young lady on the piazza, or that of any other occupant of the house he was approaching.

Lifting from his brow, as he approached the house, to wipe away the slight moisture which had gathered there even in riding, the broad-brimmed and low-crowned hat of light gray, which so well accorded with his loose but well-fitting suit of the same color, he gave an opportunity for studying the whole man, which could not well have been attained under other circumstances; and both narrator and reader may be excused for stopping him momentarily in that position, while due examination is made of his most striking outward peculiarities.

He was at least five feet eleven inches in height, with a figure rather slight than stout, but singularly erect, sinewy, and elastic, every movement giving evidence that the body could not well be set to a task beyond its power of endurance. The foot was not very small, but well-shaped, and the ungloved hand which held his riding-whip was almost faultless in shape and color. The hat removed, a brow rather broad than high was seen, with a head well balanced in all the intellectual and moral requirements, densely covered with light, curling hair, of that peculiar shade which the poetical designate as "blonde" and the practical as "sandy." The complexion, though the cheeks were a little browned by the summer sun, was very fair, and that of the brow as stainless as any petted girl's could be. The features were nearly faultless in the Greek severity of their outline, the nose straight and well cut, the mouth small but with full curved lips, the eyes of hazel, widely set. The lower part of his face was effectually concealed by a luxuriant full beard and moustache, a few shades darker than his hair, and showing a propensity to curl on slight provocation. He was a decidedly handsome man of twenty-eight to thirty, erect, gentlemanly, dignified, and with something in his general appearance irresistibly reminding the spectator of the traditional appearance of those blonde Englishmen of good birth, who seem made to dawdle life away without exhibiting one of the sterner qualities of human nature, until deadly danger shows them to have that cool recklessness of life which charged two hundred years ago with Prince Rupert and ten years ago with poor Nolan. Yet this was the idea more likely to be formed of him and his capabilities, by strangers and those who lacked opportunity to examine his face and manner closely, than by those intimately acquainted with both; for there was an occasional nervousness in the movement of the hands, and even of the whole figure, that to a close observer would have belied the first-assumed self-confidence; and a something drooping, tremulous, and undecided in the lower lip at the corners, was so well matched by a sad and even troubled expression that often rested like a cloud over the eyes, that the whole man seemed to be made into another self by them.

Such was Carlton Brand, the brother of Elsie, about whom the tongues of the two young girls had wagged so unreservedly but a few minutes before. Such was his appearance, to the outward eye, as, hat still in hand, he approached the piazza. Elsie was sufficiently absorbed in her book, not to feel his presence; and it was not until he was close upon her that the young girl saw him, flung down the costly illustrated volume in her chair with less care than might have pleased the less impulsive owner, sprang to the step and seized both the occupied hands of the new-comer, with a warmth that showed how cordial was the affection between brother and sister, so widely different in appearance and indication of character.

"How did you come here, pet?" the brother asked, as soon as his mouth was free from the kiss his sister tendered.

"Oh, ran across the fields half an hour ago, and intended to be back home by this time, only that Margaret was alone and wished me to stay; and besides——"

"Well—besides what?"

"Besides, I almost knew that you would stop here before you went home, and I should see more of you before you went away, by remaining."

Could the young girl but have seen the quick spasm of agony that just then passed over the face of Carlton Brand—the agitation and trembling which seized upon lip and hands—she might have been wiser the next moment, but she certainly would not have been happier. Just for that one moment there seemed to be lack-lustre vacancy in the eyes, total want of self-assertion in face and figure, and the handsome, noble-looking man actually seemed to have collapsed, bowed, and sunk within himself, so that he was more an object of pity than of envy. But the sister's eyes were fortunately turned away at that instant, and she saw nothing. When she looked at him again, the spasm, whatever it might have been, was gone, and she only saw his usual self. He did not reply to her last suggestion, but asked, after an instant of hesitation:

"Where is Margaret?"

"Gone down into the kitchen for a few moments, to look after a new Dutch cook, but she will soon return. And so you are really going away, brother, and I shall be so lonesome!" and the hand of the sister sought that of the dearly-loved brother again, as if every moment lost without some touch of one who was so soon to leave her, was lost indeed.

Even to this the brother gave no reply, but made a remark with reference to the rapid ripening of the grain in the wheat-fields that skirted the road beyond. A duller wit than that of Elsie Brand might have become aware that he was avoiding an unpleasant subject; and the young girl recognized the fact, but gave it an entirely erroneous explanation, believing that he must have heard some peculiarly threatening news from the scene of the invasion, making the peril of the troops about to leave more deadly than it would have been under ordinary circumstances, and that he dreaded to enter upon the theme at all, for fear of alarming her. As a consequence, her next words were a disclaimer of her own fears.

"Oh, Carlton, you need not be afraid to speak of it to me. Much as I have dreaded your going away, I know, now, that it is your duty, when your own State is invaded; and I have made up my mind to bear the separation, and even to think of you, my own dear brother, as in danger, without saying one word to hold you back."

"Have you?" That spasm was again upon his face, and the words were hoarse; but again the eye and the ear of the sister missed the recognition of any thing unusual.

"Yes; and so has Margaret."

"Has she?" The spasm had not gone off his face, and the second question was asked even more hoarsely than the first. For some reason that the young girl could not understand, he turned away from her, walked down to the end of the piazza, and stood looking off. What he was suffering at that moment, with three or four of the most powerful passions known to humanity tearing at his heart-strings at once, none may know who have not passed through the same terrible ordeal which he was then enduring. There were only the fays who may have been playing among the green grass, and the dryads yet lingering among the whispering leaves of the maples, looking in at the end of the piazza upon his face: had they been human eyes, what of wrestling and struggle might they not have seen! When he turned to walk back towards the spot where his sister was standing in surprise not unmingled with alarm, his face was again calm, but it would have shown, to the observant eye, a calmness like that of despair. His words, too, were forced when they came:

"You and Margaret both, Elsie, love me so well, I know, that you would give up almost any thing to please me; but I do not intend to task either of you too far. I am not going—that is, business detains me so that I cannot—I am not going to Harrisburgh."

"Business!" Elsie Brand had never before, in her whole young life, uttered a word so hardly or in a tone so nearly approaching to a sneer, as she spoke the single word at that moment. Were the words of Margaret Hayley ringing in her ear, and did she find some terrible confirmation, now, of what had before been so impossible to believe? "Business!—what business, Carlton, can be sufficient to keep you at home when they seem to need you so much?"

"What do you know about it?" and his tones were harsh and almost menacing. "Do we ask you women to decide what we shall do, where we shall go, and where we shall stay?"

"Oh, Carlton!" and the cry seemed to come from the very heart of the young girl. It was perhaps the first harsh word that had ever fallen on her ear, aimed at her from the lips of the brother she so adored. God only knew the agony under which that harsh word had been wrung out, as only he could know the agony it might cause! The cry instantly melted the heart to which it appealed. Carlton Brand took the hand of his sister in his own, kissed her tenderly, and said:

"Forgive me, Elsie, if I spoke as I should never speak to you! But you do not know, sometimes, what moves men to harshness which they afterwards bitterly repent."

"But you are not going with the regiment?" again she asked.

"No!—I have told you I was not, Elsie!" and the tone came very near to being a harsh one, once more.

"I am sorry—very sorry, Carlton!"

"Sorry?" and the often-recurring spasm which again passed over his features, could not have been unobserved by the young girl, for her own face seemed to reflect it. "Sorry? Are you indeed sorry that I am not going into—that I am not going to be absent from you?"

"Oh, no, Carlton! heaven knows I am not!" said Elsie, and the merry blue eyes were filled with tears. "But I think you ought to go; and you do not know, Carlton, how much may hang upon it. Do you love Margaret—really and truly love her?"

"Love her? as my own soul!" answered Carlton Brand. He did not say "as his own life"! "Why do you ask, after all that you have known of our attachment and our engagement?"

"Because, Carlton"—and the young girl, weeping the while under an impulse of feeling that she could scarcely herself understand, caught him by the arm and drew down his head towards her—"because I believe that if you do not go with the Reserves, Margaret will think that you do not do so because—oh, I cannot speak the word!"

"Because what? Speak it out!" and he seemed to be nerving himself to meet some shock that was likely to need all his energies.

"Because"—in a voice very low and broken—"because you are afraid to go—because you are a coward!"

"Has she said as much?" and the eyes of the speaker, very sad, troubled, and almost wild, seemed still to have power to read the very soul of the young girl before him. Elsie could not speak at first, but she nodded twice, and never death-bell of a condemned criminal rung out more clearly or more frightfully on the startled air, tolling the knell of a last hope, than the whisper that came at last from her lips:

"Yes!"

"Then God help me!" came from those of the strong man, in such a manifestation of agony as was painful to behold, while his hands for one moment clasped themselves together as if he would wring them in womanish weakness, then went up to his face and spread themselves as if they would shut it away forever from human sight. "God help me!—and you, Elsie, despise me if you will, but, oh, help me to keep it from her. I dare not go! I am a coward! If I should go into battle I should disgrace myself there forever, by running away at the first fire, and that would break our poor old father's heart!"

"Carlton! Carlton! my poor brother!" and the hands of the young girl closed around one of her brother's, with so warm a pressure as proved that she did not think of any shame, disgrace or fault in the connection, but only as the announcement of some great misfortune.

"Yes, Elsie, you have wrung from me the confession that I hoped never to be obliged to make to any one but my God. I have made it to Him, oh, how many times, and I almost feel that he has forgiven me, as my fellow-men will never do. I have been a coward, I suppose, from my very cradle and heaven only knows how I have managed to conceal the terrible truth from you, all this while! The very sight of blood sickens me, even when it is only the blood of beeves in a slaughter-house. One spirt from the arm of a man when he is being bled sets every nerve to trembling, and sometimes sends me fainting to the floor. One moment among the horrible sights of battle—the groans, and shrieks, and crashing bullets and spouting blood of carnage—would drive me mad or send me flying away with the curses of my whole race ringing in my ears."

"Oh, Carlton! my poor brother!" repeated once more, and in the same tone of heart-broken sympathy, was all that Elsie Brand could answer to this humiliation of the one to whom, perhaps, next to God, she had ever looked up as to His noblest human manifestation of greatness in creative power.

"Do you see what a poor miserable wretch I am?" he went on, apparently forgetful that any one besides his sister might be within hearing, and she so absorbed in the grief and shame of the revelation that she possessed no more forethought. "Think of me as an officer in my regiment, and know with what a reddened face I must have walked the streets when we paraded, conscious that if suddenly called to duty—even the quelling of a mob at the street-corner—I should be obliged to disgrace myself at once and forever! Think what I have suffered since the war broke out!—commission after commission offered me—loving my country as I believe man never loved it before—and yet not daring to strike one blow in its behalf. Obliged to make slight excuses when others have inquired why I did not go to the war—obliged to wear a double face, a mask, everywhere and at all times—dreading detection every day, and in that detection perhaps the loss of my proud father's life and of the love that has made the only hope of my own—cursing the omen that unwittingly gave me the brand of the coward in my very name—racked and tortured thus, and yet obliged to hold an honorable place among my fellow-men—it has been too hard, Elsie, too hard! And now to lose all! If she has learned to suspect me—I know her brave heart and her proud nature—I shall lose her, the richest, noblest thing on earth, half grasped, to be mourned for as never man yet mourned for woman! Do help me, Elsie! Help me to conceal my shame—to deceive her, yes—God help me!—to deceive her before whom my very soul should be laid bare—so that she will not know me for the miserable wretch and coward that I am!"

And all this while his face was wrought and contorted, at short intervals, by those fearful spasms of shame and mental suffering; and ever and anon his hands locked together and seemed to wring themselves even beyond his own volition. How different he looked, at that moment, from the handsome, noble man, in the full pride of mature adolescence, who had stepped upon that piazza but a few moments before!

"I would do any thing in the world to help you, Carlton; but what can I do?" faltered the young girl, who saw no light beyond the thick, black cloud of shame and ruin slowly settling down on the head of her beloved brother.

"Help me to conceal the truth"—he went on—"to enforce any excuse for not leaving the city at this moment! I know it is base and contemptible, but it is for a good purpose, Elsie—to save a heart that is already distracted, and a life that must be wrecked without it. We may never be placed in the same circumstances again—the war may soon be ended—if she can only be kept from knowing this, I may never be placed in the same peril again, and my whole life shall be one long proof that I am not otherwise unworthy of the woman I love so madly."

"It does not need, Carlton Brand!" sounded a voice from within—a voice that both recognized but too well; and out of the hall came the figure of Margaret Hayley.

Her words and her manner alike proved that she had heard all, or at least enough; for there was an expression of withering contempt flashing out of her dark eye and curling her proud lip, not easily to be borne by any person towards whom they were directed. There did not seem, for the moment, to be any thing like pity in her composition; and if there had been love within her heart, it appeared to have been so crushed out by one stunning blow that it could never bloom again any more than the wild flower ground beneath the heel of the wayfarer. Her head was proud, erect, haughty, disdainful; and one who had leisure to examine her closely would have seen that the nostril was opening and shutting convulsively, as if overwhelming passion was only suppressed by the physical act of holding the breath. Elsie Brand was too much dizzied and confused to be quite aware what had happened or what was about to happen. She merely uttered a cry of agitation and fright, and shrunk back alike from her brother and the woman who had come to be his judge. Carlton Brand saw more, with the quick eye of the lawyer and the sharpened perception of the lover. He realized that Margaret Hayley had heard his agonized and unmanly confession—that anger and scorn had driven away from her face the love which had so often and so pleasantly beamed upon him—that his doom was sealed.

With the knowledge came back to him that manliness in demeanor of which he had been so sorely in need a moment before. In the presence only of his sister, and when pleading with her to assist in rescuing him from the pit of grief and shame into which he felt himself to be sinking, he had been humble, abject, even cowering. Now, and in the presence of the woman for whose softened opinion he would have given the world and almost bartered his hopes of heaven,—he stood erect, and if the spasm of pain did not entirely pass away from his face, at least it changed in its character so that he was a man once more.

"I understand you, Miss Hayley," were the first words he spoke. "You have heard some words not intended for your ear. You have been listening."

"If you merely mean that I have heard what was not intended for my ear, you certainly speak the truth, Mr. Brand," she replied, catching the formality of his address at once. "But if you mean that I have listened meanly, or even voluntarily, to words intended to be confidential, you wrong yourself, equally with me, in saying so. You have spoken so loudly that not only I but even the servants in the house could not well avoid hearing you; and there is not much 'listening' in hearing words almost brawled on a piazza."

Her words were very bitter—they beseemed the lips from which they flowed. A man who loved her less or, who had fewer of the natural impulses of the gentleman than Carlton Brand, might only have thought of the taunt conveyed and forgotten its justice. He did not do so, but bowed at once with an air of respectful humility, and said:

"I beg ten thousand pardons for my hasty speech. I was mad when I made it. Certainly you have heard nothing but what you had a right to hear." And then he stood erect but silent.

Poor little Elsie Brand could contain herself no longer. How she loved her brother, only the angels knew. How easily we pardon, in those of our kindred, what would be indelible disgrace in the characters of others, all close observers of humanity know too well. Little Elsie Brand was only acting the part of nature in espousing the cause of her own blood, and saying, before time enough had elapsed for any additional words between the two principals:

"Margaret Hayley, I say that you are too hard with Carlton! If you had ever loved him, as you pretended, you would not be so! There, you have not asked my opinion, but you have it!"

The words, though kindly meant, were ill-advised. Not even her brother, who had but a few moments before been imploring her assistance, thanked her for what she had then spoken. At least he silenced her for the time with—

"You can do no good now by speaking, Elsie. It is too late. Miss Hayley has something more to say to me, no doubt, after what she has accidently heard; and I am prepared to hear it." He stood almost coolly, then, the bared head bent only a very little, and the face almost as calm as it was inexpressibly mournful. So might a convicted criminal stand, feeling himself innocent of wrong in intent, beaten down under a combination of circumstances too strong to combat, awaiting the words of his sentence, and yet determined that there should be something more of dignity in his reception of the last blow than there had ever been in any previous action of his life.

Twice Margaret Hayley essayed to speak, and twice she failed in the effort. If she had been calmly indignant the moment before, Nature had already begun to take its revenge, and she was the woman again. Her proud head was bent a little lower, and there was a dewy moisture in the dark eyes, that could never be so well dried up as in being kissed away. Who knows that the proud woman was not really relenting—letting the old love come back in one overwhelming tide and sweep away all the barriers erected by indignation and contempt? Who knows how much of change might possibly have been wrought, had the next words of Carlton Brand been such as indicated his belief that the chain between them was not yet severed utterly? Who knows, indeed?—for his words were very different.

"Miss Hayley, I have waited for you to speak what I feel that you have to say. You have heard words that no betrothed woman, I suppose, can hear from her promised husband and yet retain that respect for him which should be the very foundation of the marriage-bond."

"I have." The words came from her lips in tones much lower than those in which she had before spoken, and she did not even look at him as she answered.

"You have heard me declare myself—I know by the face you wore but a moment since, that you have heard all this—what you hold to be the lowest and most contemptible thing on God's footstool—a coward."

"I have. I would rather have died on the spot than heard those words from the lips of the man I have—have loved!" The words still low, and some hesitation in those which concluded the sentence. One would almost have believed, at that moment, that of the two the culprit was the down-looking and low-voiced woman, instead of the man whose godlike presence so contradicted the dastardly vice he was confessing.

"I have no defence to offer," the speaker went on. "If you have heard all that I believe, no further explanation is necessary. You know the worst; and as a proud woman, with honor unspotted and beyond suspicion, you have a right to pass what sentence you choose upon my—my shame, my crime, if you will!"

Perfect silence for an instant, then a broken sob from Elsie, whose face was streaming with tears denied to both the others, and who was leaning her forehead against the sharp corner of one of the columns of the piazza, apparently that the slight physical pain thus inflicted might do something to still the mental agony that raged within. Then Margaret Hayley, as if she had passed through a long struggle but conquered at last with a triumph slaying her own soul, raised her head, drew in a hard breath, shook back one of the tresses of her dark hair which had fallen over her brow, and spoke:

"Do you know, Carlton Brand—I cannot call you Mr. Brand again, for that address is mockery after what we have been to each other—do you know what that sentence must be, in justice to myself and to you?"

"I can guess it, Margaret Hayley," was the answer, the prefix changed again in imitation of her, just as she a moment before had changed it in imitating him. The incident was a mere nothing, and yet suggestive as showing how closely the two seemed to study each other, and how much of real sympathy there must after all have been between them. "I can guess it, and I will try to bear it."

"You can guess it—you do guess it—separation!" said Margaret in a low voice that she could not quite render firm.

"I was not mistaken—I supposed as much," he answered. "You are a proud woman, Margaret, and you could not marry a man for whom you failed to entertain respect—"

"I am a proud woman, but a woman still," said Margaret. "You whom I have loved so truly, can best guess the depth of my woman's nature. But I cannot and will not marry a man to whom I cannot look up and say: 'This man has the courage and the will to protect me in every peril!'"

"Have you ever had reason to believe that I could not and would not protect you, if need came, against all the world?" and his eyes momentarily flashed, at that thought, with a light which should not have shone in the orbs of a coward.

"Words are idle, Carlton Brand!" said Margaret. "There is no protection so sacredly due as that of a strong man to his country. You know it, and I know it as well. The man who knows his duty to his country and dares not do it, through sheer bodily fear, could not be trusted in any relation. His wife would not dare trust him, if she knew it; and you have opened my eyes but too painfully. And so, in mercy to both, all must be over between us—"

"Oh, do not say that, Margaret, sister!" broke out Elsie, in a more faltering voice than she had ever used in pleading for herself since the earliest day of childhood. Margaret did not heed her, if she heard, but went on from the point at which she had been interrupted:

"All is over between us, Carlton Brand, at once and forever, unless——"

"Unless?—what is the possibility you would yet hold out to me?" and the speaker showed more agitation, at that one renewed glimpse of hope, than he had done when battling against utter despair.

"Unless you will yet obey the summons that has called you with every other true son of Pennsylvania to the field, and prove to me that you did not know yourself or that you were endeavoring to play a cruel part in deceiving your sister and me!"

The face of Carlton Brand had been comparatively calm, ever since the coming out of Margaret. Suffer as he might, most of the suffering had been hidden. Now that face assumed an aspect that was really fearful to behold. The veins on his forehead swelled as if they would burst, his lip set hard, his eyes glared as if one touch might have made him a maniac, and his hands worked convulsively. All the symptoms of extreme terror and of a repugnance which no effort could overcome, were imminent in every glance and motion; and something of those phenomena was exhibited which we may suppose the Highland seer of old time to have shown, when he was carried beyond himself by the invisible powers, and saw battle, defeat and horrible death for himself or others, slowly unrolling before his spiritual sight. Elsie Brand shuddered and drew back to the column which had before sheltered her. Margaret Hayley still stood erect, though she was evidently laboring under suppressed excitement, and none could say what the end of this scene might be. It was quite a moment before Carlton Brand could command himself sufficiently to speak, and then he said in a low, broken voice:

"No—I cannot. I cannot kill my poor gray-haired old father with the spectacle of the flight and disgrace of his only son."

"And you have decided well," said Margaret. "It is a bitter thing to say, but I am glad that you have marked out my course as you have done. Think—oh heaven!" and she seemed indeed to be for the moment addressing the powers above instead of those regnant upon the earth—"think how near I came to being this man's wife and the possible mother of his children, each one marked with the curse set upon them by their father!" No human ear could have heard the whisper which followed: "Enough of disgraces descending from parents—oh, heaven!"

"You are right, Margaret Hayley—right!" spoke Carlton Brand, his voice lower, more hoarse and broken than it had been at any part of the long interview. "You have reminded me well of your duty and mine. The day may come when you will be sorry for every word that has fallen from your lips; but it may not. To-day you are doing right—let the future take care of itself. Good-bye!"

He took the long, slender white fingers in his, and looked upon them a minute, the tears at last gathering in his eyes. Then, when through the thickening drops he could scarcely see them longer, he raised them to his lips, pressed a kiss upon them, dropped the hand and strode off the piazza and away, never once looking back as he passed down the path towards the gate.

Margaret Hayley had been overstraining both heart and brain, and the penalty asserted itself very soon. Her discarded lover was scarcely half way down the path when the revulsion came, and pride for the moment broke down before her terrible sorrow. The proud neck bent, she stretched out her arms after the retreating figure, the single word, "Carlton!" came half whispered and half groaned through her lips, her eyes closed, and she sunk fainting into the arms of Elsie.

Carlton Brand did not hear the call. A moment, and still without another glance at the house where he was leaving behind the happiness of a life, he had unloosed the splendid chestnut pawing at the gate, swung himself into the saddle and ridden away westward. He reeled a little in his seat as he rode, as a drunken man might have done—that was all the apparent difference between the man with a hope who had arrived half an hour before and the man who now departed without one.

CHAPTER III.

Kitty Hood and Her School-house—Dick Compton going Soldiering—A Lovers' Quarrel, a bit of Jealousy, and a Threat—How Dick Compton met his supposed Rival—An Encounter, Sudden Death, and Kitty Hood's terrible Discovery.

"I do not care, Dick Compton! You are a mean, good-for-nothing fellow, and the sooner you go away and get killed, the better. I hope I may never set eyes on you again, as long as I live."

A pleasant style of address, especially from a pretty woman; and yet one to which a good many persons have submitted, first and last, from little people whom they could physically have slain with a single stroke and mentally discomfited with very little more trouble!

The time of this objurgation was the same morning on which the events took place which have already been recorded as occurring at the residence of Margaret Hayley, and at a very little earlier hour than that which witnessed the departure of Carlton Brand from the place of his signal discomfiture. The place was in front of a little country-school-house standing half a mile from the Darby road, north-westward, and perhaps two miles westward from the Hayleys. The interlocutors were Richard Compton (already introduced as "Dick" by the flippant tongue of his companion), a young and well-to-do farmer of the neighborhood, about a quarter of a century old, perhaps some five feet nine in height, thickset, strong-limbed, with a round, good-humored face guiltless of beard but browned a good deal by exposure in the field, generally smiling and content, but with a spice of the bull-dog in his nature which made him sullen occasionally and led him always to be very fond of his own peculiar way;—and Kitty Hood, teacher of the district school of that particular section of the Keystone State, a short, round, rosy little lass, with merry brown eyes that only occasionally had a sterner kind of mischief in them, dark brown waved hair, and just the last general appearance in the world that a phrenologist would have selected for the necessarily calm and dignified life of an instructress of callow youth.

The old weather-beaten school-house, erected perhaps fifty years before but not yet swept away in the prevailing rage for staring new white baby-houses for the instruction of children in the country, stood at the base of a slight wooded hill, facing southward; a fine old sycamore near the door holding the whole house and all its contents in flecked light and shade; a group of locusts not far away to the left showing a motley jumble of benches beneath, that were evidently the favorite lounging-place of the children during play-hours; and a little pond of a hundred or two feet in diameter, with one edge half covered with the leaves of the intrusive pond-lilies, and the other bordered by a juvenile wharf of stones, old boards and bark, supplying the youngsters with a place in which to paddle, sail boats and get very wet without any danger of being drowned, in summer, and with a reliable though limited skating-ground in winter. Its convenience for winter sports could only be imagined, at that season of the year when the wild-roses were clambering up the dingy boards of the inclosure, to the windows of the school-room; but its inevitable use as a part of the great "highway of nations" was too plainly shown by a circumstance which, alas!—at the same moment illustrated the vicissitudes of commerce and the necessity for the existence of insurance companies. A stately vessel of the mercantile guild, twelve inches in length but with the dignity of three masts and each holding spitted on it as a sail nearly an entire half-sheet of foolscap paper, had evidently left the little wharf during the morning play-hour, freighted for the Spice Islands lying up among the pond-lilies, but suffered the fate of many sea-going ships, fallen under the power of foul winds or adverse currents, and stranded on a reef of mud some paces from the shore, from which the ingenuity of her factors had not yet been able to release her, and where she lay "keeled over" in a manner equally contaminating to her white paper sails and unpleasant to her possible passengers. No doubt anxious eyes were meanwhile glancing out of the windows, between two leaves of the geography which detailed the perils of navigation in the East Indian archipelago, to see whether piratical canoes or pirogues did not put off to burn that noble vessel and massacre her crew, before noon should give time for any further efforts towards her release. Here the course of this narration painfully but necessarily loses sight of the good three-master "Snorter, of Philadelphia," as many another of the fairy barks launched by inexperienced youth disappears from view and is known no more forever; but let us hope that this particular venture was floated off at some early "spring tide" of play-spell, and that she "came safely to her desired haven!"

Within the little one-story school-house, with its unpainted desks and benches of pine, dark with age and scarred by notch and inscription from the penknives of half a century of school-boys,—there was going on, at that moment, precisely what may be seen in any school from Windsor to Washoe, when the ruling power is temporarily absent. Wilkie painted not only from life, but from the inevitable in life, when he drew the "Village School in an Uproar;" for mobs have been put down by the military power and even savage communities have been made quiet by the exercise of powder-and-ball; but no force has yet been discovered that could check (and who would wish it to be entirely checked, after all?) the riotous mischief of the school-room when the terrible eye is removed! Five minutes before, Mistress Hood in the chair of authority, fifty heads of all hues and all textures had been more or less closely bent down over book and slate, and a low monotonous hum, something like the sleepy drone from a score of bee-hives, had been heard floating out on the summer air. Now, Mistress Kitty Hood had been just two minutes absent from the school-room, and a nice little Pandemonium was already established, that it would need some birchings and many strong words to annihilate. Half a dozen of the big boys had gathered into a knot, not far from the door, and were snickering aloud and pointing knowingly towards the point of interest without, with running comments on "Miss Hood's beau!" Three little girls, forgetting their sex, were playing at leap-frog between and over two of the benches, to the disarrangement of their short skirts and the eventual tumbling over of one of the benches with a loud clatter. Two or three of the larger girls were in close conversation, about what there is no means of knowing except that one of them remarked that "it was real indecent and she meant to tell her ma!" One boy, who was the possessor of a magnificently national handkerchief, had stuck it on the end of the long ruler from the mistress' desk, and was going through a dress parade of one, with a feeble whistle as music. A young brute was taking the opportunity of pinching the ear of a smaller boy, and making him whimper, as a punishment for some previous alleged injury. Another had made a pair of spectacles out of blue paper, and stuck them on the nose of a little girl on one of the near benches, who blushed so rosily that her white dress, blue spectacles and red face quite supplied the national colors. And still another, with cheeks marvellously distended, was trying whether he could, in the short space of time during which the mistress might be absent, manage to choke down three early harvest-apples without dying by strangulation or requiring any assistance from his companions.

Such were the surroundings of the country school-house, and such was the aspect of Kitty Hood's little school-room during her temporary absence. And now what was the necessity which had for the moment withdrawn her from her charge, and what was the provocation under which the words were uttered, given at the commencement of this chapter?

Perhaps the personal appearance of Dick Compton may go at least a little distance towards the explanation. As he stood kicking his foot against the lower step of the school-house door and listening to the words of petulance which his mistress so plentifully bestowed upon him, it was to be seen that while his coat was a sack of ordinary light summer-stuff, looking civil and homelike enough, his pants and cap were both gray and military, according to the pattern of the Reserves. Under his arm he held a bundle which might very easily have contained the coat necessary to make the uniform complete; and such was, indeed, the composition of the parcel. Dick Compton, never before connected with any military organization, had the night before determined to abandon home and the girl he loved, leave other hands to gather in the fast ripening harvest, intrust his favorite pair of farm-horses to the care of his younger brother and the hands on the farm, and make at least a small part of the response to the urgent call of Governor Curtin. He had been down to the rendezvous, to sign the roll of membership in the Reserves, and to get his uniform, that morning. He was to leave with the regiment for Harrisburgh, that evening, and it was on his way home to the pleasant farm-house lying a couple of miles northward and across the main road leading up from Market street, that he had called at the school-house to make his adieux to Kitty Hood, which seemed to be so ungraciously received.

They were so indeed. Kitty, from the moment when Compton tapped at the door and called her out amid the surprised glances and then the tittering of the school-children—from the moment when she had observed his military cap and pants—had understood the whole story and put herself not only on her dignity but her unamiability. She had not smiled even once upon him, or allowed him to take her hand, though he reached out for it; and though the jolly round face of the school-mistress was not by any means the pattern of countenance that could be made stupendously awful by the greatest amount of effort, yet Kitty had done her best to be royal—not to say imperial. To his explanations she had been worse than the traditional "deaf"—insultingly interrupting; and to his asseverations that the country needed the heart and the arm of every true man, she had answered with that unromantic but unanswerable word: "fiddlestick!" She had tried wheedling, coaxing, scolding, every thing but crying, in the effort to make him forego his resolution and take off his name (supposing that he could do such a thing) from the roll of the Reserves. She had no doubt, and expressed herself to that effect, that if he went to Harrisburgh he would come back in a coffin, all cut up into little bits by the savages, or not come back at all and have his skull and bones used for a drinking cup and a few necklaces by the women of Secessia, or come back in a condition worse than either, with both legs cut off close up to the body, one arm gone and his skull broken in, and a pretty thing for a respectable young woman to marry!

It was very well, for the sake of his adherence to his patriotic purpose, that Dick Compton had in him that dash of bull-dog tenacity to which allusion has before been made; for it is not every man to whom such words of spiteful prophesy and determined discouragement, coming from the lips of a pretty woman who made her own love the excuse for uttering them, would have been without their effect. They might as well have been uttered to one of the granite gods of old, as to Compton, so far as moving him to any change of purpose was concerned; but his temper was by no means of as good proof as his determination. In fact, Kitty Hood's spiteful expostulations very soon made him ill-natured if not angry; and by the time the culmination already recorded was reached, he was quite ready to say, in a tone corresponding to her own:

"Well, I will go, Kitty Hood, whether you like it or not. I was a fool not to go away without walking a mile further to let you know any thing about it."

"Nobody asked you!" was the petulant reply.

"Nobody need to ask me, next time!" was the rejoinder. "I have a right to be killed, if I please, and it is none of your business whether I am or not. A pretty world it would be, with half of it made up of women too weak and too cowardly to fight a cat, and the other half of men tied fast of their apron strings, so that they had to ask every time they wanted to go away, just as one of your little whelps of school-boys whines: 'Please to let me go out!'"

Kitty Hood was finding a tongue quite as sharp as her own, by this time, and the effect was very much what is often seen in corresponding cases. Finding her lover growing as angry as herself, and a little more violent, the young school-mistress concluded that it was time to assume a less decided demeanor, so that if they must part they might do so without an absolute quarrel.

"Well, Dick," she said, after a moment of pause, "there is no use of your being angry about it!" Just as if she had not been showing ill-temper from the beginning—the minx! "Of course I cannot hold you, and do not wish to do so, if you prefer dressing yourself up in that ridiculous manner and standing up to be shot at, to remaining here with me."

"I don't prefer it, you know I don't, Kitty!" said Dick, aware that his flank of conversation had once more been turned and himself placed in a false position.

But here came an interruption. A young gentleman of seven made his appearance in the door of the school-room, his hands blacker than the proverbial ace-of-spades, his nether raiments spotted, and his face drawn into a most comical whimper, while his words came out between a sob and a hiccough:

"Please, Miss Hood, won't you come in to Jem Stephenson? He has gone and upsot the inkstand all over my hands and spoilt my new trowsers!"

"Go in and keep your seat, you young villain, or I shall flog you and Jem Stephenson both!" was the consoling assurance with which the "young villain" departed; while the hum from the school-room was evidently increasing, and the young school-mistress felt that she must indeed soon resume the reins of government if she was not to be permanently left without a realm worth ruling. But she took time to rejoin to Compton's last assertion.

"I don't know any thing of the kind. I say that if you thought half as much of me as you did of public opinion and making a show of your fine new clothes, you would not stir one step."

"Now, Kitty, do be reasonable—" again began Compton.

"Look at other people—don't they respect the wishes of those they expect to marry?" the young lady went on, not heeding his last attempt. "See—there is Carlton Brand—who does not know that he has remained at home ever since the war broke out, though he could have been a Colonel and perhaps even a General—just because he was really in love with Margaret Hayley, and she did not wish him to leave her?"

It is scarcely necessary to say, at this stage of the narration, that Miss Kitty Hood was "begging the question." She had never heard one word to indicate why Carlton Brand had not accepted his opportunities, and she merely mentioned the two as people of prominence in the section, acquaintances, and the first pair of lovers of whom she happened to think. But she had made a terrible blunder, as many of us do at the very moment when we seem to be performing the very keenest of operations. Carlton Brand—one of the finest-looking men to be found within a radius of an hundred miles, a member of one of the liberal professions, and known to be wealthy enough to afford indulgence in any line of life which he might happen to fancy—was naturally an object of envy if not of suspicion to hundreds of other young men who did not feel that they possessed quite the same advantages. Young farmers, who chanced to catch him saying a polite word to their sisters, looked at him through eyes not too confiding, in spite of the fact that not even rumor had pointed out a single instance in which he had indulged in a dishonorable amour; and those who detected him in glances of kindness (perhaps of admiration) towards demoiselles whom they had marked out as their own destined marital property, had a bad habit of even looking out of the corners of their eyes and scowling a little, at such manifestations. Carlton Brand, in all this, was only paying a very slight penalty for his triple advantage of wealth, position and good looks, while many others pay the same unpleasant toll to society for the possession of even one (and sometimes none) of the three favors of fortune.

The farm-house of the Comptons and the residence of the Brands (as will be hereafter made apparent) lay but a very short distance apart; and the little house (perhaps it might with more propriety have been called a cottage) in which Kitty Hood had seen the light, and where she lived with her quiet widowed mother, was still nearer to the abode of the young lawyer. Though the Hoods were much more humbly circumstanced than their neighbors, intercourse between the two families had always been frequent, with a very pleasant friendship between Elsie and Kitty, and more visits of the young girl at the residence of the Brands, and of Carlton, accompanying his sister, to that of the Hoods, than at all pleased the lover and expectant husband of Kitty. Then the latter had a head a little giddy and a tongue more than a little imprudent; and she had shown the bad taste, many times since their tacit engagement, to draw comparisons, in the presence of her lover, to his disadvantage, and in favor of a man who had much better opportunities than the farmer for keeping his clothes unimpeachable, his hands unsoiled, and his cheek unbrowned. Only very imprudent people, and perhaps very unfeeling ones, use such words; but they are used much too often, ignoring the pure gold that may lie within a rough nugget, and preferring the mere tinsel leaf on a bit of handsome carving. Kitty Hood was one of the thoughtless, and she was likely, some day, to pay the penalty in a manner she little anticipated.

Within the few weeks previous, without Kitty being at all aware of the fact, Mr. Dick Compton had allowed himself to ruminate more than was healthy upon the glances he had chanced to see interchanged between Kitty and her "stuck-up lawyer friend," as he chose to designate him, and upon the continual commendations which she chose to bestow on the latter—until rooted personal dislike and something very near to positive jealousy, had been the result. Walking over towards the rendezvous that morning, if one shadow of hesitation on the subject of going to Harrisburgh had passed through the mind of the young farmer, it was caused by his dislike of leaving Kitty out of view, with Carlton Brand in the same near neighborhood. All that difficulty had been removed by the understanding that the lawyer was to leave at the same time and on the same service with himself; but when Kitty at once revived the obnoxious name with a new phrase of commendation, and signified that the section was not to be relieved of the lawyer's presence during his own absence, it is not very strange that the unreasonable demons of jealousy began tugging again at his heart-strings, and that he felt like performing some severe operation upon the Mordecai who sat in his gate, if he could only catch him!

"So you have got to quoting Carlton Brand again, have you!" he responded to Miss Kitty's citation. "I thought I had told before that I had heard nearly enough of that proud puppy!"

"'Puppy' indeed!" and Miss Kitty fired in an instant. "He's nothing of the kind, but a man and a gentleman, and you know it, Dick Compton!"

"Oh, yes, a gentleman, and that suits you to a turn, Kitty Hood!" was the sneering reply. "When your gentlemen are in the way, you think that an honest hard-working man is nobody."

If ever a man spoke an unjust word to a woman (and it is to be feared that a great many have been uttered since the unfortunate gift of speech was conferred upon the race), Dick Compton was stupidly unjust at that moment. For the very quarrel (it was but little else, from first to last) in which they were engaged, had originated in the young girl's evident anxiety for his safety and pleading that he would not go away and leave her, even for a short period! Kitty Hood felt the injustice, if he did not, and all the old rage came back again, in a varied form, but hotter than ever. Her eyes flashed, she choked for a moment, and then, before Dick Compton could be at all aware what was about to happen, the school-mistress drew her little white hand back and brought him a ringing box on the ear and cheek, that the latter would not be very likely to forget for a fortnight,—while she flashed out:

"Dick Compton, just take that for a fool! You are not worth any honest woman's loving, with your mean jealousy. You can go where you please, and I will never speak to you again until you learn better manners than to talk to me in that manner!"

Before the jealous lover had half recovered from the blow she stepped away from him and put her foot on the sill of the door, to re-enter. Compton, spite of the tingle in his cheek, did not quite believe in the propriety of parting in that manner, when he was just going to the war; and he made a step towards her.

"Kitty!—oh, now, Kitty—"

"Keep off, Dick Compton! Good-day and good-bye, and nobody cares where you go or how long you stay!" was the forbidding rejoinder, as the school-mistress swung herself round the jamb of the door and half disappeared. Her blood was at fever heat: that of her lover was likely to be at the same pitch in a moment.

"You won't come back, then?"

"No, I won't!"

"Then I will tell you something, Kitty Hood!" and the young man was very angry and very earnest when he made the threat. "If I can catch Carlton Brand before I go away to-night, I will just flog him till he is the nearest to a dead man you ever saw,—and see how you both like it!"

Without another word the young farmer turned and strode round the corner of the school-house with his bundle and his indignation, making hasty strides up the hill and towards the woods that lay in the direction of his home. Kitty Hood saw thus much, and realized that very probably she was looking at him for the last time. Then she realized, too, what she had scarcely felt before—that she had been terribly to blame in the quarrel—that she might have been wrecking the happiness of a life by her ill-temper—and that it would never do to let poor Dick go away to the war, so angry at her that if killed his last thought would be upon every one else rather than her, and that if he returned he would never come near her again—never! Then poor Kitty dropped her head upon her desk, heedless of the only partially-hushed Pandemonium around her and the necessity of settling with Master Jem Stephenson, spiller of ink and others,—dropped her head upon her desk and sobbed loudly enough for some of the children to be quite aware of the fact, so that one of the little boys hazarded the remark, sotto voce: "Wonder what is the matter with her!" and a bigger one enlightened his ignorance with: "Why, didn't you see? Her beau has got on sojer clothes and is going away—stupid!"

Only a minute or two, and then Kitty Hood could endure the struggle no longer. She was very unhappy and not a little penitent. She could not remain any longer in the midst of those noisy children: she must go home (or elsewhere) and see what facilities fate might yet throw in her way for seeing and speaking once more to her angry lover before his departure. Perhaps she could even find some means, still, for inducing him to remain, and then——. And at that thought the school-mistress raised her head, informed her school that she had a bad headache and must go home to bed, and dismissed them for a half-holiday.

Whereupon one of the larger girls, who had seen the lover go away, without hearing any of the parting words, and who thought that she understood all about the affair, remarked to one of her companions that: "That was real nice, and she thought all the better of Miss Hood for it!" while one of the larger boys, unawake as yet to any of the softer feelings, bawled out to his mates that: "Miss Hood was going to see her old beau off—ki-yah!" It is painful to be obliged to say, justifying previously-expressed apprehension, that even the stranded vessel was forgotten in the haste with which the school separated, and that all the imaginary pirates of the Society, the Friendly and various other islands that maintained every thing else rather than friendly society for sailors, had at least one day more of chance at her with their canoes and pirogues.

Her scholars dismissed, Kitty Hood took time to wash and cool her eyes and to smooth her hair, for a moment, at the little wash-closet in one corner of the school-room—then flung on her light bonnet and gauzy mantle and took her way, walking somewhat rapidly in spite of the heat of the coming noon, along the path that led around the base of the hill north-westward towards the residence of Carlton and Elsie Brand.

Mr. Richard Compton had meanwhile been walking yet more rapidly, with his bundle under his arm, up the path leading over the hill, almost due north, and through the belt of woods discernible from the school-house. Whether the increasing heat of the day added to the heat of his temper is uncertain; but certain it is that he did not at all cool down under it. He had the excuse of being the party last ill-used, if not indeed the party first so treated. He loved Kitty Hood beyond all reason, and he was of course the person most likely to grow angry at her and jealous of her, beyond all endurance. He felt that he could not worse punish her, or better satisfy himself, than by carrying out his threat and soundly flogging Carlton Brand if he should once catch him under proper circumstances; he had no doubt whatever of his ability to flog him or "any other man," when he once set about the task; and while surmounting the hill, and even after plunging into the cool, thick, leafy woods, full of the twitter of birds and the fragrance of June blossoms, which should have had the power to soften passion in the breast of any man who held a true sympathy with Nature, his mental fists were clenched and his teeth set in a manner most threatening for any opposing force with which he might happen to be brought into contact.

That "opposing force" was much nearer than the young man at the moment imagined. He was just emerging by the path to the main road which he was to cross, half a mile before reaching his own farm, when he saw a horseman riding rapidly up from the eastward. Intersecting the path just where it joined the road, was a blind road leading through the woods across toward the Darby, and closed at the entrance by a swinging gate. There was a low panel near it, and the young farmer leaped it in preference to unfastening the clumsy latch—finding himself, when beyond the fence, in the presence of Carlton Brand, who had just reined in his horse at the gate. Whatever there may have been in the face of the horseman at that moment, within a few minutes after his leaving the presence of Margaret Hayley and his sister, the eyes of Dick Compton were not sufficiently keen to recognize it. He only saw the handsome, proud-looking young lawyer, and his old antipathy rose, with the remembrance of the threat he had just used, accompanying it. Carlton Brand saw nothing more in the face of the young farmer than he had been accustomed to see, and accosted him as he might have done any other acquaintance, under the same circumstances, with a request for a slight service.

"Ah, Compton, is that you?—just be kind enough to throw open that gate for me, will you?"

"No—I'll not do any thing of the kind. If you want the gate open, just get off and open it yourself!" was the surly reply, very much to the astonishment of the lawyer. His face paled a little, then flushed, and he hesitated for an instant before he asked:

"What do you mean, Richard Compton, by answering me in that manner?"

"What I say!" answered Compton, quite as insolently as before. "You are a puppy, Carlton Brand, and I have half a mind to take you off that horse and flog you soundly, instead of opening a gate for you."

"The d——l you have!" was the very natural reply. "Well, Dick Compton, I do not know what it is all about, but you are behaving very much like a ruffian, to a man who has never done any thing worse to you than to treat you like a gentleman."

"You lie, Carlton Brand, and you know it!" was the response.

"I lie, do I?" and the speaker shifted a little uneasily in his saddle, though he made no apparent movement to alight.

"Yes, you lie!" said Compton, his voice thick and hoarse with agitation and anger. "And if you will get off that horse I will teach you a lesson about meddling with other people's property, that you will remember for a twelvemonth."

If Carlton Brand's face expressed intense surprise, it was certainly nothing more than he felt; for what the "meddling with other people's property" could mean, except that he might unwittingly have run across some interest of Compton's in the pursuit of his profession, he had no more idea than he could have had of the number of trees in the adjoining wood or the depth of soil on which his horse was standing. Yet he threw his leg at once over the saddle, at the last salutation, sprang to the ground, flung his bridle over one of the posts near the gate, and said:

"Now then!"

In an instant and without another word, Dick Compton, who had dropped his bundle as the other dismounted, sprang at him, fury in his face and the clench of determined hostility in every nerve. Probably no battle on earth was ever fought so singularly—the one combatant without the least cause for his rage, and the other not even acquainted with the accusation made against him. They seemed not badly matched, in physical force, though any connoisseur of the exclusively muscular would have considered Compton likely to be by far the most enduring. He was fifteen or twenty pounds the heavier, and fully trained by field labor; Brand two or three inches the taller, athletic, and a little the longer armed.

Half a dozen blows were rapidly exchanged, before either succeeded in breaking the guard of the other. Then Compton managed to reach the lawyer's cheek, with a blow of some violence that probably stung within quite as much as it did without. At all events it brought a new color to his face, and from that instant he was cool no longer. He struck out more rapidly and angrily, and Compton followed his motion. In less than a minute half a dozen blows had reached the faces and bodies of each, and there was a probability that, whatever the event of the fight, both would be injured as well as disfigured. Suddenly, the instant after, as Compton aimed a well-directed blow at the throat of his antagonist, that he believed would entirely settle the affair, something happened, upon which he had not calculated. Whether his blow was entirely fended he did not know; but what he did know, so far as he knew any thing, was that Carlton Brand's right fist, dashed out with a force little less formidable than the kick of an iron-shod horse, struck him on the left of the nose and the cheek adjoining, sending a perfect gore of blood spouting over face and clothing, and throwing him reeling backward, stunned and half senseless, to the earth,—the fight over, so far as he was to bear any part in it.

There was only a little sensation left in poor Compton at that juncture, but that little cried out against being beaten down in such a manner by a man whom he had before considered his inferior in muscular power, and whom he had set out to flog. The bull-dog within him wished to rise and make another effort, but for a moment his eyes would not open and his head would not clear sufficiently for him to make any effort at regaining his lost perpendicular. When he thought he heard a groan and a loud "thud" on the ground, and he did manage to struggle to a sitting position, the sight that met his eyes was nearly sufficient to drive him back into his partial insensibility, amazement and horror being about equally compounded in the spectacle. Carlton Brand lay at length on the ground, his face set in a frightful spasm, a thin white froth issuing from the set lips, the eyes closed, and not even a quiver of motion in the limbs. Dick Compton sprang up, then, with a supernatural energy born of absolute fright, and bent over his prostrate antagonist. To all appearance he was dead!—dead as if he had been lying there for the last century! The frightened farmer put his hand to his temples, his pulses and his heart, and found no motion whatever. Then the dreadful fear took possession of him that his own last blow, which he remembered aiming at the throat of the other, might have taken effect there at the same moment when he was himself struck and prostrated—that some vital part of the throat might have been touched and death instantly ensued!

To say that Dick Compton was frightened and even horrified at this unexpected issue of the pugilistic combat which he had forced, is indeed to put the case very mildly. He was literally paralyzed, for the moment, with consternation. What was his fate?—to be a homicide! And—good God!—here another thought took possession of him. He had left Kitty Hood at the school-house, only a little while before, himself angry and in a dangerous mood, and with his last words threatening personal violence against Carlton Brand! If he should be dead—and there seemed to be no hope to the contrary—what words of his could ever persuade the school-mistress that he had not entertained enough of jealousy and anger against the lawyer to desire his death?—and how far would not Kitty's evidence go in proving before a criminal court that he was an intentional murderer?

Such reflections are not pleasant, to say the least! A very few of them go a great way in a man's life. Those who have been placed, even for one moment, in the belief that they have suddenly become homicides, need not be told how far beyond all other horrors is the feeling: those who have missed the sensation, may thank God with all reverence for having spared them one of the untold agonies which belong only to the damned!

Dick Compton was not one of the most delicate of men, either in action or perception, but he was a good fellow in the main, with quite enough of intuition to foresee the worst perils of a situation, and with quite enough of presence of mind to act quickly in a desperate emergency. There was yet no breath or motion in the prostrate man: he would die very soon if not already dead: something might yet be done for him: but that something, if done at all, must be done at once. Besides, if death should prove to be real, he would himself be a little better circumstanced if found trying to preserve the life of his antagonist, than if discovered to have let him die without effort. A mile to the westward, and at the side of the very road at the edge of which he was standing, was the residence of one of the two doctors of the immediate section, and medical assistance might be procured, with the aid of the fallen man's horse, in a brief period.

With this thought in mind, and in far less time after the occurrence of the catastrophe than it has needed to put it upon record, Dick Compton had unfastened the horse of Carlton Brand from the post, swung himself into the saddle, and was galloping away westward, a little doubtful in mind whether he was indeed going after a doctor or looking for a convenient gallows and a hangman,—and wishing, from the bottom of his soul, that he had never entertained quite so good an opinion of his personal prowess as that which had led him into such a terrible position. Once, as he galloped on, he caught sight of his new military trowsers, and found himself thinking whether, when they hung soldiers, they allowed them to retain their uniform or subjected them to the degrading alternative of the prison gray! And that is all, of the very peculiar reflections of Mr. Dick Compton as he sped away after the doctor, that needs to be put upon record.

Kitty Hood, meanwhile, leaving the school-house perhaps ten minutes after her lover, had sped along the path at the base of the woods, intent on going over to the residence of the Brands and seeking advice, if not assistance, from Elsie, in her dilemma. She had quite overcome her anger, now, and taken into her young heart a full supply of that which very often follows the former—anxiety; and her feet moved as glibly, in the better cause of reconciliation, as her tongue had done not long before in a very unreasonable lovers' quarrel.

The path she was pursuing would have led her out to the main road, which she must cross to reach the Brands', some half a mile further west than the point at which the gate gave access to the blind road through the wood. But there was a little spot of marshy ground before reaching the road; she remembered that her shoes were thin and that wet feet were disagreeable even in June, and as a consequence she struck into a cross path which intersected the blind road and would bring her out at the gate. As a secondary consequence, she followed that road and came out a minute after at the gate, to open it without observing what lay beyond, and to start back with a scream of affright as she saw the body of Carlton Brand lying on the green sward without, his face still set in that terrible contortion, and the rigidity of death alike in limb and feature.

The young girl had seen but little of death, and not yet learned to regard it rather as a deliverance than otherwise; and in any shape it frightened her. How natural, then, that she should regard it with peculiar horror when she came upon it alone, by a wood-side, and in the person of an acquaintance equally admired and respected! But what must have been her feelings when, the moment after, and before she had commanded herself sufficiently to do more than utter that single scream of terror, she saw a bundle lying near the apparently dead man, saw blood staining one of his hands and the grass beside him, and recognized the bundle as the same she had seen, not half an hour before, under the arm of Richard Compton!

If that unfortunate young man, on discovering the supposed extent of his mishap, had remembered the threat against the lawyer made but a little while before to Kitty, how did that threat spring into her mind on seeing the blood and recognizing the bundle! Murder, beyond a doubt, and Dick Compton the murderer! The two had met, accidentally, had quarrelled, had clenched, and in that clench her lover had forgotten all except his jealousy and fear of the lawyer, and had killed him outright! Oh, here was trouble, indeed, to which that of a few moments previous had been but the merest shadow! Dick would be arrested, tried, imprisoned, perhaps hung; and she would be obliged to give the fatal evidence that must seal his doom! Terrible indeed—most terrible!—the thought culminating in such mental suffering that the poor girl scarcely knew whether she was treading upon earth or air, as she took one more look upon the motionless form, the blood, and the accusing bundle that lay beside—then turned her back with a shudder upon all, crossed the road and hastened over the fields beyond, by a bye-path that would lead her to the home of the murdered man—her errand now, and her reason for haste, how different from what it had been when walking towards, the same destination but a few moments before!

CHAPTER IV.

The Residence of the Brands—Robert Brand and Dr. Philip Pomeroy—Radical and Copperhead—A passage-at-arms that ended in a Quarrel—Elspeth Graeme the Housekeeper—The Shadow of Shame—Father and Daughter—The Falling of a Parent's Curse.

Half a mile northward from the Market street road which has already been before so many times alluded to—on the north side of that road and at the distance of a mile westward from the Hayley residence, was located that before mentioned as the abode of the Brands. It was a fine old house, built fifty or sixty years before, but within a few years repaired and rebuilt with a lavish disregard of cost, a railed promenade having been added at the apex of the steep roof, the whole two stories of height re-enclosed, the windows and doors comparatively modernized, the piazzas remodelled and widened, and all done that the carpenter's art could well be expected to achieve, to add to the comfort and durability of the mansion without destroying the appearance of respectable age which it had already put on. The house stood facing southward upon nearly level ground, the lawn in front of good depth and thickly dotted with forest and other shade trees that had evidently known all the years of the building; while from the eastern side a narrow lane ran down to the road and afforded ingress and egress to carriages passing back towards the handsomely-grouped range of outbuildings in the rear. Adjoining this lane and behind the house was a large garden, with grape trellises and many of the appliances of luxury in horticulture.

At the eastern end of the piazza a broad single door opened into the somewhat antiquated hall; and from that hall a door opened into a parlor fitted up with every appliance of convenience that could be needed in such a country residence. Behind that parlor another door opened into a smaller apartment correspondingly fitted but with more of those belongings calculated to show its constant occupancy; and from that rear room still another door opening to the left disclosed a bed-room of comfortable appearance and tasteful arrangement. On the other side of the hall the dining and domestic apartments stretched away, while the spacious upper story supplied rooms to other members of the family.

It was very evident, at a glance, that wealth presided over the modernized old house, and that good taste was not forgotten; and yet an impression could not well be avoided that there must be something of severity, and repugnance to ornament, conjoined with the wealth. Poverty, or even struggling pride, would not have afforded so much of the best: warm taste and lavish liberality would have supplied something more of the costly and the luxurious.

In the second of the rooms mentioned—that immediately in the rear of the parlor, two persons were in conversation at about noon of the same day of the occurrences previously recorded. The one, sitting in an easy-chair with his right leg raised and resting upon another chair crowned with a pillow,—was apparently sixty-five to seventy years of age; tall, if his proportions could properly be judged as he sat, with a figure that must have been robust in its time; the hair so nearly white as to preclude any idea of the color which it might have worn in earlier days; the face well cut and even handsome for its age, though with a shade of severity in the firm nose and shaven lips, which under some circumstances might grow threatening; but any accurate judgment of his character rendered difficult, by the look of pain stamped upon his face by evident bodily suffering. Resting against a small table partially covered with bandages and embrocations, was a stout cane, indicating both that the invalid was in the habit of using a support of that character, and that he could not, even now, be entirely confined to his chair. Such was Robert Brand, owner of the mansion into which we have been introduced, and father of two children apparently as little alike in nature as in sex—Carlton and Elsie Brand.

The second figure was quite as well deserving of notice as the old man in his easy-chair. Doctor Philip Pomeroy, who was at that moment pacing up and down the room without any apparent cause for that violent exercise in warm weather, was a man in whom the acute physiognomist might have found something illustrated by that seemingly listless motion—something possessed in common by restless men, in the superior animal kingdom, and those bears and hyenas which seem to traverse a great many unnecessary miles in travelling up and down the bars of their cages, in the inferior. And yet the doctor could not have been called, with any propriety, an "animal-looking man"—it was the motion which supplied the comparison. He was apparently forty-five to fifty, tall and slight figured, with face clean shaven except a heavy dark moustache, features a little aquiline and decidedly sharp lips that suggested an occasional sneer and a word cutting like a scimetar, eyes of keen scintillant dark brown or black, and rather long dark straight hair through which the threads of silver began to show more as an ornament than a disadvantage. A very fine looking man—a man of undoubted power and will—a man who had evidently enjoyed the most favorable associations; and yet how nearly a man to be either braved or trusted without reserve, it might have needed Lavater's self to decide on a brief acquaintance. That same Lavater, if acquainted with the peculiarities of road turn-outs, would have decided one point, at least, from the vehicle that stood in the lane, near the door—no clumsy and cumbersome gig, weighing an indefinite number of tons and set down as the proper conveyance for doctors from the day when the first one grew too lazy to walk,—but a light, sporting-looking buggy, seated for one, and suggesting fast driving quite as much as the high-blooded, thorough-bred bay that champed his bit before it and stamped impatiently for the coming of his master.

From the medical character of the visitor and the disabled appearance of the man in the easy-chair, it might have been concluded that the call was a professional one; and such was indeed the fact. An injury to the right limb of Robert Brand, received many years before, had a habit of asserting itself at uncertain periods, crippling him materially all the while, and at those particular times throwing him into all those agonies indifferently known as the pangs of neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. At such periods, the traditional character of the "gouty old Admiral" of the English stage, always limping and thumping a heavy cane, and nearly always venting words more forcible than polite, was very nearly illustrated in the old gentleman, his desire for active motion being generally in an inverse ratio to the power of movement. Dr. Pomeroy, one of the most skilful of the physicians of the section, and a man in very extensive practice, was always his medical adviser at such times, and re-directed the application of those warm flannels and neutralizing embrocations which constituted all that even science could do for the alleviation of his sufferings, and about which old Elspeth the housekeeper knew a good deal more, all the while, than any physician could possibly do. For the three days previous, Robert Brand had been suffering to a most painful degree, and this was the third of the daily visits of the doctor.

But whatever might have been the professional character of the visit, it had, before the moment when our attention is called to the two interlocutors, lost any feature which could have marked it as such. Robert Brand was a patriot, almost equally warm-hearted and hot-headed in the type of his attachment to his country; while Dr. Pomeroy was one of those quasi-loyalists, popularly called "Copperheads," who have the love of country quite as often on their lips as the most unshrinking war-advocate can do, but who prefer to show that love by objecting to every effort made for the preservation of nationality, by denouncing, in every nine words out of ten, something done by the loyal government, while only the poor tenth is kept for a wail over the unfortunate character of the "civil war,"—and by undervaluing every success won by the Union arms, while every momentary advantage gained by the rebels is correspondingly magnified. He seemed to take particular delight, always, in tormenting the old gentleman just to the verge of a positive rupture without quite causing one; and just now, in the advance of the rebel forces into Pennsylvania, he found a golden opportunity.

"Bah!" he said, in response to a strongly patriotic expression of his patron, which had led him to bring down one of his hands upon the disabled leg with a force causing a new tingle in that limb and a new expression of agony upon his face—"bah! All you hot-headed people, young and old, use just such language, all the while. It amounts to nothing, except that perhaps it eases your minds. Saying that 'the Union must and shall be preserved,' and prophesying all kinds of good things for the nation, amount to but very little while a set of incapables sit filling their pockets at Washington (more than half of them traitors, in my opinion), while the army is worse mismanaged than it could be if a set of school-boys led it, and while the enemies you affect to despise are really winning every thing and overrunning the whole country."

"Out upon you, Dr. Pomeroy!" cried the old man, angrily. "You dare to call yourself a patriot, and talk in that manner! There are plenty of fools at Washington, but I would rather see fools there than traitors! If you are not a perfect block-head, you know that the rebels have lost twice as much as they have gained, within the past year, and that if the fight goes on in the same manner for one year more, the miserable mongrel concern will die of its own weakness! But you do not want it to die—that is just what ails you!—you would rather see Jeff Davis in the Capitol than any loyal man who would not give all the offices to your miserable broken-down party!"

"And you would rather see the whole country lying in ruins, with heaps of dead everywhere and the few who remain starving to death in the midst of them, than that the country should be in any other hands than those of your friends who do nothing else than talk about the nigger, legislate for the nigger, and fight for the nigger!" answered the doctor, still continuing his walk, and his face showing decided temper.