ejaculated, "Mine own!" as he opened his arms to receive her.

"Sir!" said she, and drew herself up like an offended queen.

Poor Reginald was stricken dumb with astonishment. This chilling demeanour, this angry rebuff, where he had expected the old, tender welcome, banished the gladness from his heart as the cheerful brightness is swept from the landscape when a dark cloud drifts athwart the face of the sun. He stood bewildered a moment, with a sense of goneness on him, like one who finds himself suddenly overboard upon a midnight sea, and beholds the ship pass into shrouding gloom, while the dreadful conviction falls upon his soul that he has not been missed. He tried to speak, but his pallid lips refused their office. At last he murmured

"O Lucretia! what have I done? what is the matter? why this cruel coldness? Don't you love your Reginald any more?"

Her lips curled in bitter scorn, and she replied, in mocking tones

"Don't I love my Reginald any more? No, I don't love my Reginald any more! Go back to your pitiful junk-shop, and grab your pitiful yardstick, and stuff cotton in your ears, so that you can't hear your country shout to you to fall in and shoulder arms. Go!" And then, unheeding the new light that flashed from his eyes, she fled from the room and slammed the door behind her.

Only a moment more-only a single moment more, he thought, and he could have told her how he had already answered the summons and signed the muster-roll, and all would have been well; his lost bride would have come back to his arms with words of praise and thanksgiving upon her lips. He made a step forward, once, to recall her, but he remembered that he was no longer an effeminate dry goods student, and his warrior soul scorned to sue for quarter. He strode from the place with martial firmness, and never looked behind him.

When Lucretia awoke next morning, the faint music of fife and the roll of a distant drum came floating upon the soft spring breeze, and as she listened the sounds grew more subdued, and finally passed out of hearing. She lay absorbed in thought for many minutes, and then she sighed, and said, "Oh! if he were only with that band of fellows, how I could love him!"

In the course of the day a neighbour dropped in, and when the conversation turned upon the soldiers, the visitor said

"Reginald de Whittaker looked rather downhearted, and didn't shout when he marched along with the other boys this morning. I expect it's owing to you, Miss Loo, though when I met him coming here yesterday evening to tell you he'd enlisted, he thought you'd like it, and be proud

39

of. Mercy! what in the nation's the matter with the girl?"

Nothing, only a sudden misery had fallen like a blight upon her heart, and a deadly pallor telegraphed it to her countenance. She rose up without a word, and walked with a firm step out of the room; but once within the sacred seclusion of her own chamber, her strong will gave way, and she burst into a flood of passionate tears. Bitterly she upbraided herself for her foolish haste of the night before, and her harsh treatment of her lover at the very moment that he had come to anticipate the proudest wish of her heart, and to tell her that he had enrolled himself under the battle-flag, and was going forth to fight as her soldier. Alas! other maidens would have soldiers in those glorious fields, and be entitled to the sweet pain of feeling a tender solicitude for them, but she would be unrepresented. No soldier in all the vast armies would breathe her name as he breasted the crimson tide of war!

For weeks she nursed her grief in silence, while the rose faded from her cheeks. And through it all she clung to the hope that some day the old love would bloɔm again in Reginald's heart, and he would write to her; but the long summer dayз dragged wearily along, and still no letter came. The newspapers teemed with stories of battle and carnage, and eagerly she read them, but always with the same result: the tears welled up and blurred the closing lines-the name she sought was looked for in vain, and the dull aching returned to her sinking heart. Letters to the other girls sometimes contained brief mention of him, and presented always the same picture of him-a morose, unsmiling, desperate man, always in the thickest of the fight, begrimed with powder, and moving calm and unscathed through tempests of shot and shell, as if he bore a charmed life.

But at last, in a long list of maimed and killed, poor Lucretia read these terrible words, and fell fainting to the floor:-"R. D. Whittaker, private soldier, desperately wounded !"

On a couch in one of the wards of an hospital at Washington lay a wounded soldier; his head was so profusely bandaged that his features were not visible: but there was no mistaking the happy face of the young girl who sat beside him-it was Lucretia Borgia Smith's. She had hunted him out several weeks before, and since that time she had patiently watched by him and nursed him, coming in the morning as soon as the surgeon had finished dressing his wounds, and never leaving him until relieved at nightfall. A ball had shattered his lower jaw, and he could not utter a syllable; through all her weary vigils she had never once been blessed with a grateful word from his dear lips; yet she stood to her post bravely and without a murmur, feeling that when

ELL, Sire, with such a hope,

I'll track

My seventy years of memory back:

I think 'twas in my twentieth spring

Ay, 'twas-when Casimir was
king-

John Casimir-I was his page
Six summers in my earlier age.
There was a certain Palatine,
A count of far and high descent,
Rich as a salt or silver mine;
And he was proud, ye may divine,

As if from heaven he had been sent:
He had such wealth in blood and ore

As few could match beneath the throne
And he would gaze upon his store,
And o'er his pedigree would pore,
Until by some confusion led,

Which almost look'd like want of head,
He thought their merits were his own.
His wife was not of his opinion;

His junior she by thirty years,
Grew daily tired of his dominion.
I was a goodly stripling then;

At seventy years I so may say,
That there were few, or boys or men,
Who, in my dawning time of day,
Of vassal or of knight's degree,
Could vie in vanities with me;
For I had strength, youth, gaiety,
A port, not like to this ye see,
But smooth, as all is rugged now;

For time, and care, and war, have plough'd My very soul from out my brow;

But let me on: Theresa's form-
Methinks it glides before me now,
Between me and yon chestnut's bough,
The memory is so quick and warm;
And yet I find no words to tell
The shape of her I loved so well:

She had the Asiatic eye,

Such as our Turkish neighbourhoo:l
Hath mingled with our Polish blood,
Dark as above us is the sky;
But through it stole a tender light,
Like the first moonrise of midnight.
We met we gazed-I saw, and sigh'd,
She did not speak, and yet replied;
There are ten thousand tones and signs
We hear and see, but none defines-
Involuntary sparks of thought,

Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought,

And form a strange intelligence,
Alike mysterious and intense,

Which link the burning chain that binds,
Without their will, young hearts and minds:
Conveying, as the electric wire,

We know not how, the absorbing fire.
I saw, and sigh'd-in silence wept,
And still reluctant distance kept,
Until I was made known to her,
And we might then and there confer
Without suspicion-then, even then,

I long'd, and was resolved to speak;
But on my lips they died again,

The accents tremulous and weak.

Then through my brain the thought did pass Even as a flash of lightning there,

That there was something in her air
Which would not doom me to despair;

And on the thought my words broke forth,
All incoherent as they were;
Their eloquence was little worth,
But yet she listen'd-'tis enough-
Who listens once will listen twice;
Her heart, be sure, is not of ice,
And one refusal no rebuff.

For lovers there are many eyes;
And one fair night, some lurking spies
Surprised and seized us both.

The Count was something more than wrotl:

I was unarm'd; but if in steel,

All cap-à-pie from head to heel,

What 'gainst their numbers could I do?

"Twas near his castle, far away

From city or from succour near,
And almost on the break of day;

I did not think to see another,

My moments seem'd reduced to few;
And with one prayer to Mary Mother,
And, it may be, a saint or two,
As I resign'd me to my fate,
They led me to the castle gate:

Theresa's doom I never knew,
Our lot was henceforth separate.

"Bring forth the horse!"--the horse was brought, In truth, he was a noble steed,

A Tartar of the Ukraine breed,
Who look'd as though the speed of thought
Were in his limbs; but he was wild,
Wild as the wild deer, and untaught,
With spur
and bridle undefiled-
"Twas but a day he had been caught;
And snorting, with erected mane,
And struggling fiercely, but in vain,
In the full foam of wrath and dread

To me the desert-born was led :
They bound me on, that menial throng,
Upon his back with many a thong;
Then loosed him with a sudden lash-
Away!-away!—and on we dash!
Torrents less rapid and less rash.

Away!-away!-my breath was gone,
I saw not where he hurried on:
'Twas scarcely yet the break of day,
And on he foam'd-away!-away!
The last of human sounds which rose,
As I was darted from my foes,
Was the wild shout of savage laughter,
Which on the wind came roaring after
A moment from that rabble rout:
With sudden wrath I wrench'd my head,
And snapp'd the cord, which to the mane
Had bound my neck in lieu of rein,
And, writhing half my form about,
Howl'd back my curse; but 'midst the tread,
The thunder of my courser's speed,
Perchance they did not hear nor heed:
It vexes me-for I would fain

Have paid their insult back again.

I paid it well in after days:

There is not of that castle gate,

Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight,
Stone, bar, moat, bridge, or barrier left,
Nor of its fields a blade of grass,

Save what grows on a ridge of wall,
Where stood the hearth-stone of the hall;
And many a time there might pass,
ye
Nor dream that e'er that fortress was.

I saw its turrets in a blaze,

Their crackling battlements all cleft,

And the hot lead pour down like rain From off the scorch'd and blackening roof, Whose thickness was not vengeance-proof. They little thought that day of pain, When launch'd, as on the lightning's flash, They bade me to destruction dash,

That one day I should come again, With twice five thousand horse, to thank The Count for his uncourteous ride. They play'd me then a bitter prank, When, with the wild horse for my guide, They bound me to his foaming flank: At length I play'd them one as frankFor time at last sets all things evenAnd if we do but watch the hour, There never yet was human power Which could evade, if unforgiven, The patient search and vigil long Of him who treasures up a wrong.

Away, away, my steed and I,

Upon the pinions of the wind,
All human dwellings left behind;

We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound the night
Is chequer'd with the northern light:
Town-village-none were on our track,
But a wild plain of far extent,
And bounded by a forest black;

And, save the scarce seen battlement
On distant heights of some strong hold,
Against the Tartars built of old,
No trace of man. The year before
A Turkish army had march'd o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod:
The sky was dull, and dim, and grey,

And a low breeze crept moaning by-
I could have answer'd with a sigh-
But fast we fled, away, away,
And I could neither sigh nor pray;
And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain
Upon the courser's bristling mane;
But, snorting still with rage and fear,
He flew upon his far career:
At times I almost thought, indeed,
He must have slacken'd in his speed;
But no-my bound and slender frame
Was nothing to his angry might,
And merely like a spur became :
Each motion which I made to free
My swoln limbs from their agony

Increased his fury and affright:

I tried my voice-'twas faint and low,
But yet he swerved as from a blow;
And, starting to each accent, sprang
As from a sudden trumpet's clang:
Meantime my cords were wet with gore,
Which, oozing through my limbs, ran o'er;
And in my tongue the thirst became
A something fierier far than flame.

We near'd the wild wood-'twas so wide,
I saw no bounds on either side;
'Twas studded with old sturdy trees,
That bent not to the roughest breeze
Which howls down from Siberia's waste,
And strips the forest in its haste,-
But these were few and far between,
Set thick with shrubs more young and green.
Luxuriant with their annual leaves,
Ere strown by those autumnal eves
That nip the forest's foliage dead,
Discolour'd with a lifeless red,
Which stands thereon like stiffen'd gore
Upon the slain when battle's o'er,
And some long winter's night hath shed
Its frost o'er every tombless head,
So cold and stark the raven's beak
May peck unpierced each frozen cheek:
"Twas a wild waste of underwood,
And here and there a chestnut stood,