heart throb passionately against his own; he took from her burning lips the first pure, womanly kiss: she was all his. But when she turned her head, there was a quick upward glance of her eyes, he knew not whether of appeal or thanks. There was a Something in the world more near and real to her than he; he loved her the better for it: yet until he found that Unknown God, they were not one.

It was an uncertain step broke the silence, cracking the crusted snow.

"Why, Gaunt!" said Palmer, "what are you doing in the cold? Come to the fire, boy!"

He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in his own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took them from her.

you

"Let me do it," he muttered. "I'd like to make your whole life warm, Dode, - your life, and any one's love." Dode's face flushed with a happy smile. Even David never would think of her as alone again. Poor David! She never before had thought how guileless he was, -how pitiful and solitary his life. "Come home with us," she said, eagerly, holding out her hand.

He drew back, wiping the sweat from his face.

"You cannot see what is on my hand. I can't touch you, Dode. Never again. Let me alone."

"She is right, Gaunt," said Palmer. "You stay here at the risk of your life. Come to the house. Theodora can hide us; and if they discover us, we can protect her together."

Gaunt smiled faintly.

"I must make my way to Springfield to-morrow. My work is there, - my new work, Palmer."

Palmer looked troubled.

"I wish you had not taken it up. This war may be needed to conquer a way for the day of peace and good-will among men; but you, who profess to be a seer and actor in that day, have only one work: to make it real to us now on earth, as your Master did, in the old time."

Gaunt did not speak,-fumbled among the chips at the fire. He raised himself at last.

"I'm trying to do what 's right," he said, in a subdued voice. " 'I have n't had a pleasant life, but it will come right at last, maybe."

"It will come right, David!" said the girl.

His face lighted her cheery voice sounded like a welcome ringing through his future years. It was a good omen, coming from her whom he had wronged.

"Are you going now, Gaunt?" asked Palmer, seeing him button his thin coat. "Take my blanket, nay, you shall. As soon as I am strong enough, I'll find you at Springfield."

He wished he could hearten the poor unnerved soul, somehow.

Gaunt stopped outside, looking at them, - some uncertain thought coming and going in his face.

"I'll speak it out, whatever you may think. Dode, I 've done you a deadly hurt. Don't ask me what it is, - God knows. I'd like, before I go, to show you I love you in a pure, honorable way, you and your husband".

The words choked in his throat; he stopped abruptly.

"Whatever you do, it will be honorable, David," said Palmer, gently.

"I think - God might take it as expiation," - holding his hand to his head. He did not speak again for a little while, then he said,

"I will never see these old Virginian hills again. I am going West; they will let me nurse in one of the hospitals; that will be better than this that is on my hand."

Whatever intolerable pain lay in these words, he smothered it down, kept his voice steady.

"Do you understand, Douglas Palmer? I will never see you again. Nor Dode. You love this woman; so did I,- as well as you. Let me make her your wife before I go,-here, under this sky, with God looking down on us. Will you? I shall

be happier to know that I have done it."

He waited while Douglas spoke eagerly to the girl, and then said,

"Theodora, for God's sake don't refuse! I have hurt you, the marks of it you and I will carry to the grave. Let me think you forgive me before I go. Grant me this one request."

Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.

"I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace between us, David."

But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and trembling. "It shall be as you say," said Palm

er.

So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them one : simple words, wrung out of the man's thin lips with what suffering only he knew.

"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Thus he shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them came from as pure a heart as any child's that lives. He bade them good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw him again. Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or confiscation, had stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was "high time to be movin'," and when he was left alone, trudging through the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a breathless, “Ef dis nigger on'y knew what Mist' Perrine would say!"

A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter's ice and snow,

and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole summer's wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of light,

will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate, looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist' Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this summer, that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly's shiny sides against the "Government beastesses," in talking of the giant red beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich gardenmould. "Yer've no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf, I'll bet!" Even the crimson trumpetflower on the wall is "a Virginny creeper, Sah!" But Bone learns something from them in exchange. He does not boast so often now of being "ole Mars' Joe's man," sits and thinks profoundly, till he goes to sleep. "Not of leavin' yer, Mist' Dode. I know what free darkies is, up dar; but dar 's somefin' in a fellah's 'longin' ter hisself, af'er all!" Dode only smiles at his deep cogitations, as be weeds the garden-beds, or fodders the stock. She is a half- Abolitionist herself, and then she knows her State will soon be free.

So Dode, with deeper-lit eyes, and fresher rose in her cheek, stands in the door this summer evening waiting for her husband. She cannot see him often; he has yet the work to do which he calls just and holy. But he is coming now. It is very quiet; she can hear her own heart beat slow and full; the warm air holds moveless the delicate scent of the clover; the bees hum her a drowsy good-night, as they pass; the locusts in the lindens have just begun to sing themselves to sleep; but the glowless crimson in the West holds her thought the longest. She loves, understands color: it speaks to her of the Day waiting just behind this. Her eyes fill with tears, she knows not why her life seems rounded, complete, wrapt in a great peace; the grave at Manassas, and that planted with moss on the hill yonder, are in it: they only make her joy in living more tender and holy.

:

He has come now; stops to look at his wife's face, as though its fairness and meaning were new to him always. There is no look in her eyes he loves so well to see as that which tells her Master is near her. Sometimes she thinks he too But she knows that "according to her faith it shall be unto her." They are alone to-night; even Bone is asleep. But in the midst of a crowd, they who love each other are alone together: as the first man and woman stood face to face in the great silent world, with God looking down, and only their love between them.

The same June evening lights the windows of a Western hospital. There is not a fresh meadow-scented breath it gives that does not bring to some sick brain a thought of home, in a New-England village, or a Georgia rice-field. The windows are open; the pure light creeping into poisoned rooms carries with it a Sabbath peace, they think. One man stops in his hurried work, and looking

out, grows cool in its tranquil calm. So the sun used to set in old Virginia, he thinks. A tall, slab-sided man, in the dress of a hospital-nurse: a worn face, but quick, sensitive; the patients like it better than any other: it looks as if the man had buried great pain in his life, and come now into its Indian-summer days. The eyes are childish, eager, ready to laugh as cry, - the voice warm, chordthe touch of the hand unutterably

ant,tender.

A busy life, not one moment idle; but the man grows strong in it, — a healthy servant, doing a healthy work. The patients are glad when he comes to their ward in turn. How the windows open, and the fresh air comes in! how the lazy nurses find a masterful will over them! how full of innermost life he is! how real his God seems to him!

He looks from the window now, his thought having time to close upon himself. He holds up his busy, solitary life to God, with a happy smile. He goes back to that bitter past, shrinking; but he knows its meaning now. As the warm evening wanes into coolness and gray, the one unspoken pain of his life comes back, and whitens his cheerful face. There is blood on his hands. He sees the old man's gray hairs blown again by the wind, sees him stagger and fall. Gaunt covers his bony face with his hands, but he cannot shut it out. Yet he is learning to look back on even that with healthy, hopeful eyes. He reads over again each day the misspelled words in the Bible, thinking that the old man's haggard face looks down on him with the old kindly, forgiving smile. What if his blood be on his hands? He looks up now through the gathering night, into the land where spirits wait for us, as one who meets a friend's face, saying,

"Let it be true what you have writ, -The Lord be between me and thee,' forever!"