her coffee with a resigned gulp, with the firm conviction that the civil war had been designed for her especial trial and enlargement in Christian grace.

So Bone was called in from the cowyard. His eyes were quite fiery, for the poor stupid fellow had been crying over the "warm mash" he was giving to Coly. "Him's las' words was referrin' ter yer, yer pore beast," he had said, snuffling out loud. He had stayed in the stables all day, "wishin' all ole she-cats was to home, an' him an' Mist' Dode could live in peace."

However, he was rather flattered at the possession of so important a story just now, and in obedience to Aunt Perrine's nod seated himself with dignity on the lowest step of the garret-stairs, holding carefully his old felt hat, which he had decorated with streaming weepers of crape.

Dode, pressing her hands to her ears, heard only the dull drone of their voices. She shut her eyes, sometimes, and tried to fancy that she was dreaming and would waken presently, that she would hear her father rap on the window with his cowhide, and call, Supper, Dody dear?" — that it was a dream that Douglas Palmer was gone forever, that she had put him away. Had she been right? God knew; she was not sure.

hurry, woman? You've but a step across the road. Stay to-night. Dode an' me 'll be glad of yer company. It's better to come to the house of murnin' than the house of feastin', you know."

66

You may be thankful you 've a house to cover you, Ann Perrine, an’”

"Yes, I know. I'm resigned. But there 's no affliction like death. - Bone, open the gate for Mis' Browst. Them hasps is needin' mendin', as I've often said to Joseph, um!"

The women kissed each other as often as women do whose kisses are — cheap, and Mis' Browst set off down the road. Bone, turning to shut the gate, felt a cold hand on his arm.

"Gor-a'mighty! Mist' Dode, what is

it?"

The figure standing in the snow wrapt in a blue cloak shook as he touched it. Was she, too, struck with death? Her eyes were burning, her face white and clammy.

"Where is he, Uncle Bone? where?" The old man understood - all. "Gone dead, darlin',"-holding her hand in his paw, tenderly. "Don't fret, chile! Down in de Tear-coat gully. Dead, chile, dead! Don't yer understan'?"

"He is not dead," she said, quietly. “ "Open the gate," pulling at the broken hasp.

"Fur de Lor's sake, Mist' Dode, come in 'n' bathe yer feet 'n' go to bed! Chile, yer crazy!"

Common sense, and a flash of something behind to give it effect, spoke out of Dode's brown eyes, just then.

"Go into the stable, and bring a horse after me. The cart is broken ?"

แ Yes, 'm. Dat cussed Ben". "Bring the horse, and some brandy, Uncle Bone."

The old man's flabby face worked. He did not say anything, but went into the stable, and presently came out, leading the horse, with fearful glances back at the windows. He soon overtook the girl going hurriedly down the road, and lifted her into the saddle.

"Chile! chile! yer kin make a fool of ole Bone, allays."

She did not speak; her face, with its straight-lidded eyes, turned to the mountain beyond which lay the Tear-coat gully. A fair face under its blue hood, even though white with pain,- an honorable face: the best a woman can know of pride and love in life spoke through it. "Mist' Dode," whined Ben, submissively, "what are yer goin' ter do? him home?"

"Yes."

Bring

"Fur de lub o' heben!"-stopping short. "A Yankee captain in de house, an' Jackson's men rampin' over de country like devils! Dey'll burn de place ter de groun', ef dey fin' him."

"I know."

her heart told her that imperiously from the first. But there was not one instant to lose.

"I cannot wait for you, Uncle Bone. I must go alone."

"Debbil de step! I'll take yer 'cross fields ter Gentry's, an' ride on myself." "You could not find him. No one could find him but me."

Something possessed the girl, other than her common self. She pushed his hand gently from the reins, and left him. Bone wrung his hands.

"'N' de guerrillas, -'n' de rest o' de incarnate debbils!"

She knew that. Dode was no heroine, - a miserable coward. There was not a black stump of a tree by the road-side, nor the rustle of a squirrel in the trees, that did not make her heart jump and throb against her bodice. Her horse climbed the rocky path slowly. I told you the girl thought her Helper was alive, and very near. She did to-night. She thought He was beside her in this lonesome road, and knew she would be safe. She felt as if she could take hold of His very hand. It grew darker: the mountains of snow glowered wan like the dead kings in Hades; the sweeps of dark forests whispered some broken mysterious

den opening, she could see on a far hillside the red fires of a camp. She could not help the sick feeling in her throat, nor make her hand steady; but the more alone she was, the nearer He came,—the pale face of the Nazarene, who loved His mother and Mary, who took the little children in His arms before He blessed them. Nearer than ever before; so she was not afraid to tell Him, as she went, how she had suffered that day, and that she loved this man who lay dying under the snow: to ask that she might find him. A great. gulf lay between them. Would He go with her, if she crossed it? She knew He would.

A strange peace came to the girl. She untied her hood and pushed it back, that her whole head might feel the still air. How pure it was! God was in it,-in'all.

The mountains, the sky, the armies yonder, her own heart, and his under the snow, rested in Him, like motes in the sunshine.

The moon, rising behind a bank of cloud, threw patches of light now and then across the path: the girl's head, as she rode through them, came into quick relief. No saint's face,-a very woman's, its pale, reserved beauty unstrung with pain, her bosom full of earthly love, but in her eyes that look which Mary must have given, when, after she thought her Lord was dead, He called her, "Mary!" and she, looking up, said, "Master!"

She had reached the highway at last. She could see where, some distance yet beyond, the gully struck black across the snow-covered fields. The road ran above it, zigzag along the hill-side. She thought, as her horse galloped up the path, she could see the very spot where Douglas was lying. Not dead,- she knew he was not dead! She came to it now. How deathly still it was! As she tied the horse to the fence, and climbed down the precipice through the snow, she was dimly conscious that the air was warmer, that the pure moonlight was about her, genial, hopeful. A startled snow-bird chirped to her, as she passed. Why, it was a happy promise! Why should it not be happy? He was not dead, and she had leave to come to him.

Yet, before she gained the level field, the pulse in her body was weak and sick, and her eyes were growing blind. She did not see him. Half covered by snow, she found his gray horse, dead, killed by the fall. Palmer was gone. The gully was covered with muddy ice; there was a split in it, and underneath, the black water curdled and frothed. Had he fallen there? Was that thing that rose and fell in the roots of the old willow his dead hand? There was a floating gleam of yellow in the water, -it looked like hair. Dode put her hand to her hot breast, shut her dry lips. He was not dead! God could not lie to her!

Stooping, she went over the ground again, an unbroken waste of white: until,

close to the water's edge, she found the ginseng-weeds torn and trampled down. She never afterwards smelt their unclean, pungent odor, without a sudden pang of the smothered pain of this night coming back to her. She knelt, and found footmarks, one booted and spurred. She knew it what was there he had touched that she did not know? He was alive: she did not cry out at this, or laugh, as her soul went up to God, only thrust her hand deep into the snow where his foot had been, with a quick, fierce tenderness, blushing as she drew it back, as if she had forgotten herself, and from her heart caressed him. She heard a sound at the other side of a bend in the hill, a low drone, like somebody mumbling a hymn.

She pushed her way through the thicket: the moon did not shine there; there was a dark crevice in the hill, where some farmer's boy had built a shed. There was a fire in it, now, smouldering, as though whoever made it feared its red light would be seen by the distant pickets. Coming up to it, she stood in the door-way. Douglas Palmer lay on a heap of blankets on the ground: she could not see his face, for a lank, slothful figure was stooping over him, chafing his head. It was Gaunt. Dode went in, and knelt down beside the wounded man,-quietly: it seemed to her natural and right she should be there. Palmer's eyes were shut, his breathing heavy, uncertain; but his clothes were dried, and his side was bandaged.

"It was only a flesh-wound," said Gaunt, in his vague way,-"deep, though. I knew how to bind it. He'll live, Douglas will."

He did not seem surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her hands on Palmer's pillow, but not touching him. Gaunt's lean face had a pitiful look, some

She

times, the look of the child he was in his heart,-hungry, wistful, as though he sought for something, which you might have, perhaps. He looked at Dode,-the child of the man that he had killed. did not know that. When she came in, he thought of shaking hands with her, as he used to do. That could never be again,- never. The man that he had killed? Whatever that meant to him, his artist eye took keen note of Dode, as she knelt there, in spite of remorse or pain below: how her noble, delicate head rose from the coarse blue drapery, the dark rings of her curling hair, the pale, clear-cut face, the burning lips, the eyes whose earthly soul was for the man who lay there. He knew that, yet he never loved her so fiercely as now,-now, when her father's blood lay between them.

"Did you find him?" she asked, without looking up. "I ought to have done

it. I wish I had done that. I wish I had given him his life. It was my right."

One would think she was talking in her sleep.

uneasily; she wanted his first look all to herself. She pushed back his fair hair: what a broad, melancholy forehead lay under it! The man wanted something to believe in, a God in life: you could see that in his face. She was to bring it to him: she could not keep the tears back to think that this was so. The next minute she laughed in her childish fashion, as she put the brandy to his lips, and the color came to his face. He had been physician before; now it was her turn to master and rule. He looked up at last, into her eyes, bewildered,- his face struggling to gather sense, distinctness. When he spoke, though, it was in his quiet old voice.

"I have been asleep. Where is Gaunt? He dressed my side."

"He is out, sitting on the hill-side."
"And you are here, Theodora ?"
"Yes, Douglas."

He was silent. He was weak from loss of blood, but his thoughts were sharp, clear as never before. The years that were gone of his life seemed clogged in

"Because I loved him."

hard, cruel! He never had felt it as now, while he lay helpless, his sultry look read

"Did you, Dode? I had a better right than that. Because I hated him." "He never harmed you, David Gaunt," - with as proud composure as that with which a Roman wife would defend her lord.

"I saved his life. Dode, I'm trying to do right: God knows I am. But I hated him he took from me the only thing that would have loved me."

She looked up timidly, her face growing crimson.

"I never would have loved you, David." "No? I'm sorry you told me that, Dode."

That was all he said. He helped her gently, as she arranged the carpets and old blanket under the wounded man; then he went out into the fresh air, saying he did not feel well. She was glad that he was gone; Palmer moved

were pure and restful; love and home waited in them; something beyond, — a peace he could not yet comprehend. But this life was not for him,--he remembered that; the girl was nothing to him now he was not fool enough to taunt himself with false hopes. She came there out of pity: any woman would do as much for a wounded man. He would never fool himself to be so balked again. The loss cut too deep. So he forced his face to be cool and critical, while poor Dode waited, innocently wondering that he did not welcome her, pity her now that her father was dead, forgetting that he knew nothing of that. For him, he looked at the fire, wondering if the Rebel scouts could see it, thinking it would not be many days before Lander would dislodge Jackson, trying to think of anything rather than himself, and the beautiful woman kneeling there.