"Phil wrote me that he was a hero and asked me to look after him. Were you there?"

"Yes, with the battery your brother was supporting. He was the colonel of a shattered rebel regiment lying just in front of us before Petersburg. Richmond was doomed, resistance was madness, but there they were, ragged and half-starved, a handful of men not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire, he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries for water.

"Suddenly this boy sprang on the breastwork. He was dressed in a new gray colonel's uniform that mother of his, in the pride of her soul, had sent him.

"He was a handsome figure-tall, slender, straight, a gorgeous yellow sash tasselled with gold around his waist, his sword flashing in the sun, his slouch hat cocked on one side and an eagle's feather in it.

"We thought he was going to lead another charge, but just as the battery was making ready to fire, he deliberately walked down the embankment in a hail of musketry and began to give water to our wounded men.

"Every gun ceased firing, and we watched him. He walked back to the trench, his naked sword flashed suddenly above that eagle's feather, and his grizzled ragamuffins sprang forward and charged us like so many demons.

"There were not more than three hundred of them now, but on they came, giving that hellish rebel yell at every jump-the cry of the hunter from the hilltop at the sight of his game! All Southern men are hunters, and that cry was transformed in war into something unearthly when it came from a hundred throats in chorus and the game was human.

"Of course, it was madness. We blew them down that hill like chaff before a hurricane. When the last man had staggered back or fallen, on came this boy alone, carrying the colours he had snatched from a falling soldier, as if he were leading a million men to victory.

"A bullet had blown his hat from his head, and we could see the blood streaming down the side of his face. He charged straight into the jaws of one of our guns. And then, with a smile on his lips and a dare to Death in his big brown eyes, he rammed that flag into the cannon's mouth, reeled, and fell! A cheer broke from our men.

"Your brother sprang forward and caught him in his arms, and as we bent over the unconscious form, he exclaimed: 'My God, doctor, look at him! He is so much like me I feel as if I had been shot myself!' They were as much alike as twins-only his hair was darker. I tell you, Miss Elsie, it's a sin to kill men like that. One such man is worth more to this Nation than every negro that ever set his flat foot on this continent!"

The girl's eyes had grown dim as she listened to the story.

"I will appeal to the President," she said, firmly.

"It's the only chance. And just now, he is under

tremendous pressure. His friendly order to the Virginia Legislature to return to Richmond, Stanton forced him to cancel. A master hand has organised a conspiracy in Congress to crush the President. They curse his policy of mercy as imbecility, and swear to make the South a second Poland. Their watchwords are vengeance and confiscation. Four-fifths of his party in Congress are in this plot. The President has less than a dozen real friends in either House on whom he can depend. They that Stanton is to be given a free hand, and that the gallows will be busy. This cancelled order of the President looks like it."

say

"I'll try my hand with Mr. Stanton," she said with slow emphasis.

"Good luck, Little Sister-let me know if I can help," the surgeon answered cheerily as he passed on his round of work.

Elsie Stoneman took her seat beside the cot of the wounded Confederate and began softly to sing and play.

A little farther along the same row a soldier was dying, a faint choking just audible in his throat. An attendant sat beside him and would not leave till the last. The ordinary chat and hum of the ward went on indifferent to peace, victory, life, or death. Before the finality of the hospital, all other events of earth fade. Some were playing cards or checkers, some laughing and joking, and others reading.

At the first soft note from the singer, the games ceased, and the reader put down his book.

The banjo had come to Washington with the negroes

than admit one traitor to the halls of Congress from these so-called states, I will shatter the Union itself into ten thousand fragments! I will not sit beside men whose clothes smell of the blood of my kindred. At least dry them before they come in. Four years ago, with yells and curses, these traitors left the halls of Congress to join the armies of Catiline. Shall they return to rule?"

"I repeat," said the President, "you cannot indict a people. Treason is an easy word to speak. A traitor is one who fights and loses. Washington was a traitor to George III. Treason won, and Washington is immortal. Treason is a word that victors hurl at those who fail."

"Listen to me," Stoneman interrupted with vehemence. "The life of our party demands that the Negro be given the ballot and made the ruler of the South. This can be done only by the extermination of its landed aristocracy, that their mothers shall not breed another race of traitors. This is not vengeance. It is justice, it is patriotism, it is the highest wisdom and humanity. Nature, at times, blots out whole communities and races that obstruct progress. Such is the political genius of these people that, unless you make the Negro the ruler, the South will yet reconquer the North and undo the work of this

war."

"If the South in poverty and ruin can do this, we deserve to be ruled! The North is rich and powerful-the South, a land of wreck and tomb. I greet with wonder, shame, and scorn such ignoble fear! The Nation cannot Let the gulf be closed

be healed until the South is healed.

in which we bury slavery, sectional animosity, and all

strifes and hatreds. The good sense of our people will never consent to your scheme of insane vengeance.' "The people have no sense. A new fool is born every second. They are ruled by impulse and passion.'

"I have trusted them before, and they have not failed me. The day I left for Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield, you were so sure of my defeat in the approaching convention that you shouted across the street to a friend as I passed, 'Let the dead bury the dead!' It was a brilliant sally of wit. I laughed at it myself. And yet the people unanimously called me again to lead them to victory."

"Yes, in the past," said Stoneman, bitterly, "you have triumphed, but mark my word: from this hour your star grows dim. The slumbering fires of passion will be kindled. In the fight we join to-day, I'll break your back and wring the neck of every dastard and time-server who fawns at your feet."

The President broke into a laugh that only increased the old man's wrath.

"I protest against the insult of your buffoonery!" "Excuse me, Stoneman; I have to laugh or die beneath the burdens I bear, surrounded by such supporters!" "Mark my word," growled the old leader, "from the moment you publish that North Carolina proclamation, your name will be a by-word in Congress."

"I'll have help," was the calm reply, as the dreaminess of the poet and mystic stole over the rugged face. "I