noble as now, Paul Blecker, when you left me to myself to judge. If you had only touched my love"

"You would have yielded. I know. I'm not utterly base, Grey. I am glad," his face growing red, "you think I have been honorable. I tried to be. I want to act as a man of gentle blood and a Christian would do, though I'm not either."

It was a chivalric face that looked down on her, though nervous and haggard. She saw that. How bare and mean her life yawned before her that moment! how all quiet and joy waited for her in the arms hanging listlessly by his side, as if their work in life were done! Must she sacrifice her life to an eternal law of God? Was this Free Love so vile a thing?

"Will you go?"-rising suddenly. "While you stand there, the Devil comes very near me, Paul." She held out her hand. "You would despise me, if I yielded now."

"I might, but I would love you all the same, Grey," with a miserable attempt at a smile. He took the hand, holding it in his a moment. "Good bye,"-all feeling frozen out of his voice. "You 've done right, Grey. It will be better for us some day. We 'll think of that, - always.”

"You suffer. I have made your life wretched," clinging suddenly to him.

"No,"-turning his head away. "Never mind. I am not a child, Grey. Men do not die of grief. They take up hard work, and that strengthens them. And my little girl will be happy. Her God will bless her; for she is a true, good girl. Yes, true. You judged rightly."

For Blecker had taken up the alien Socialist dogma that day sincerely, but driven to it by passion: now he swayed back to his old-fashioned faith in marriage, as one comes to solid land after a plunge in the upheaving surf.

"Good bye, Paul."

The sunlight fell on their faces with a white brilliance, as they stood, their hands clasped, for a moment. The girl never

saw it afterwards without a sudden feeling of hate, as though it had jeered at her mortal pain. Then Paul Blecker stood alone by the river-side, with only a dull sense that the day was bright and unfeeling, and that something was gone from the world, never to come back. The life before he had known her offered itself to him again in a bare remembrance: the heat to get on, the keen bargains, friendships with fellows that shook him off when they married, not caring that it hurt him, — he, without a home or religion, keeping out of vice only from an inborn choice to be clean. That was all. Pah! God help us! What was this life worth, after all? He glanced at the town, laid in ashes. The war was foul indeed, yet in it there was room for high chivalric purpose. Could he so end his life? She would know it, and love him more that he died an honorable death. Shame! and cowardly too!— was there nothing worth finding in the world besides a woman's love? - he was no puling boy. If there were, what was it for him?

He looked down at the dull sweep of the valley, heard the whistle of the train that was carrying her away, and saw the black trail of smoke against the sky,

My story is nearly ended. I have no time nor wish, these war-days, to study dramatic effects, or to shift large and cautiously painted scenes or the actors, for the mere tickling of your eyes and ears. One or two facts in the history of these people are enough to give for my purpose: they are for women, -nervous, greedy, discontented women: to learn from them (if I could put the truth into forcible enough English) that truth of Christ's teaching, which has unaccountably been let slip out of our mod

ern theology, that his help is temporal as well as spiritual, deals with coarsest, most practical needs, and is sworn to her who struggles to be true to her best self, that what she asks, believing, she shall receive. That is the point,- believing. "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

How many tragedies of life besides finespun novels would suddenly be brought to an end, if the heroine were only a common-sense, believing Christian of the old-fashioned pattern! Doctor Blecker, going into the war after the day he parted from the girl at Harper's Ferry, with a sense of as many fighting influences in his life as there were in the army, had no under-sight of the clear mapping-out of the years for him, controlled by the simple request of the woman yonder who loved him. She dared not repeat that prayer now; but it had gone up once out of a childish trust, and was safely written down above.

Let us pass over five or six months, and follow Paul Blecker to Fredericksburg, the night after that bloodiest day for the Federal forces, in December. It was the fourth battle in which he had taken part. Now a man grows blasé, in a manner, even of wholesale slaughter; he plodded his way quietly, indifferently almost, therefore, over the plateau below the first range of bills, his instrument-case in hand, drinking from his brandy-flask now and then to keep down nausea. The night was clear, — a low, wan moon peering from the west, a warm wind from the river drifting the heavy billows of smoke away from the battle-field. He picked his steps with difficulty, unwilling to tread upon even the dead: they lay in heaps here, thrown aside by the men who were removing the wounded. The day was lost he fancied he could read on even the white upturned faces a bitter defeat. Firing had ceased an hour ago; only at long intervals on the far left a dull throb was heard, as though the heart of the Night pulsed

heavily and feverishly in her sleep: no other sound, save the constant, deadening roll of ambulances going out from this Valley of Death. The field where he stood was below the ridge on which were placed Lee's batteries; for ten hours the grand division of Sumner had charged the heights here, the fog shutting out from them all but the impregnable foe in front, and the bit of blue sky above, the last glimpse of life they were to see,— charging with the slow, cumulative energy of an ocean-surf upon a rock, and ebbing back at last, spent, leaving behind the drift of a horrible wetness on the grass, and uncounted murdered souls to go back to God.

The night now was bright and colorless, as I said, except where a burning house down by the canal made a faded saffron glare. The Doctor had entered a small thicket of locust-trees; the moonlight penetrated clearly through their thin trunks, but the dead on the grass lay in shadow. He carried a lantern, therefore, as he gently turned them over, searching for some one. It was a Pennsylvania regiment which had held that wood longest, ― McKinstry's. Half a dozen other men were employed like the Doctor, Irish, generally: they don't forget the fellows that messed with them as quickly as our countrymen do.

"We 're in luck, Dan Reilly," said one. "Here's the Docthor himself. Av we hed the b'ys now, we'd be complate," turning over one face after another, unmistakably Dutch or Puritan.

"Ev it's Pat O'Shaughnessy yez want," said another, "he'd be afther gittin' ayont the McManuses, an' here they are. They 're Fardowners only. Pat 's Corkonian, he is; he 'll be nearer th' inemy by a fut, I'll ingage yez.”

"He's my cousin," hard tugging at the dead bodies with one arm;-the other hung powerless. "I can't face Mary an' her childher agin an' say I lift her man widout Christian burial. - Howld yer sowl! Dan Reilly, give us a lift; here he is. Are ye dead, Pat?"

ed.

One eye in the blackened face open

"On'y my leg.

O'Shaughnessy agin th' warld, an' the warld agin th' Divil!'" - which was received with a cheer from the Corkonians.

"Av yer Honor," insinuated Dan, "wud attind to this poor man, we 'd be proud to diskiver the frind you 're in sarch of."

Blecker glanced at the stout Irishmen about him, with kind faces under all the whiskey, and stronger arms than his own."

"I will, boys. You know him, - he's in your regiment, - Captain McKinstry. He fell in this wood, they tell me."

"I think I know him,”. his head to one side. "Woodenish-looking chap, all run up into shoulders, with yellow hair?"

Blecker nodded, and motioned them to carry O'Shaughnessy into a low toolhouse near, a mere shed, half tumbling down from a shell that had shattered its side. There was a bench there, where they could lay the wounded man, however. He stooped over the big mangled body, joking with him, it was the best comfort to Pat to give him a chance to show how little he cared for the surgeon's knife, glancing now and then at the pearly embankment of clouds in the south, or at the delicate locust-boughs in black and shivering tracery against the moonlight, trying to shut his ears to the unceasing under-current of moans that reached him in the silence.

Seeing him there with his lantern and instruments, they brought him one wounded man after another, to whom he gave what aid he could, and then despatched them in the army-wagons, looking impatiently after Dan, in his search for the Captain. He had not known before how much he cared for McKinstry, with a curious protecting care. Other men in the army were more his chums than Mac, but they were coarse, able to take care of themselves. Mac was like that simplehearted old Israelite in whom there was no guile. In the camp he had been perpetually imposed on by his men,-giving

them treats of fresh beef and bread, and tracts at the same time. They laughed at him, but were oddly fond of him; he was a sharp disciplinarian, but was too quiet, they always had thought, to have much pluck.

Blecker, glancing at his watch, saw that it was eleven; the moon was sinking fast, her level rays fainter and bluer, as from some farther depth of rest and quiet than before. His keenly set ears distinguished just then an even tramp among the abrupt sounds without, — the feet of two or three men carrying weight.

-no

His voice died down. Blecker finished his examination, it needed but a minute, — then softly replaced the leg, and, coming up, stood quiet, only wiping the dampness off his forehead. Dan set down the lantern.

"I'll go, Zur," he whispered. "Ther 's work outside, belike."

The Doctor nodded. McKinstry opened his eyes.

"Good bye, my friend," - stretching out his hand to Dan. "My brother could n't have been kinder to me than you were to-night."

"Good bye, Zur." The rough thrust out his great fist eagerly. "God open the gate wide for yer Honor, the night," - clearing his voice, as he went out. "I'm going, then, Blecker?"

Paul could not meet the womanish blue eyes turned towards him: he turned abruptly away.

"Why! why! Tut! I did not think you cared, Paul,” — tightening his grasp of the hand in his. Then, closing his eyes, he covered his face with his left hand, and was silent awhile.

"Go, Doctor," he said, at last. "I forgot that others need you. Go at once. I'm very comfortable here."

"I will not go. Do you see this?" pointing to the stream of bright arterial blood. "It was madness to throw your life away thus; a handkerchief tightened here would have sufficed until they carried you off the field."

"Yes, yes, I knew. But the wound came just as we were charging. Sabrecut, it was. If I had said I was wounded, the men would have fallen back. I thought we could take that battery; but we did not. No matter. All right. You ought to go ?"

"No. Have you no message for home?"-pushing back the yellow hair as gently as a woman. The mild face grew distorted again and pale.

"I've a letter, in my carpet-sack, in our tent. I wrote it last night. It 's to Lizzy, you will deliver it, Doctor?"

Blecker could hardly keep back a smile even the pocket - furniture was neatly ordered in the hour of death. "If it is lost," - turning his head restlessly, "light your lantern, Blecker, it is so dark, if it is, tell her " his voice was gone. "Tell her," lifting himself suddenly, with the force of death, "to be pure and true. My loving little girl, Lizzy, wife." Blecker drew his head on his shoulder. "I thought—the holidays were coming,"-closing his eyes again wearily," for us. But God knows. All right!"

His lips moved, but the sound was inaudible; he smiled cheerfully, held Paul's hand closer, and then his head grew heavy as lead, being nothing but clay. For the true knight and loyal gentleman was gone to the Master of all honor, to learn a broader manhood and deeds of higher emprise.

Paul Blecker stood silent a moment, and then covered the homely, kind face reverently.

"I would as lief have seen a woman die," he said, and turned away.

Two or three men came up, carrying others on a broken door and on a fenceboard.

One of them was a burly Western boatman, with mop-like red hair and beard. Blecker looked at him, shook his head, and went on.

"No use?"-gritting his heavy jaw. "Well!"-swallowing, as if he accepted death in that terrible breath. "Eh, Doctor? Do you hear? Wait a bit," fumbling at his jacket. "I can't There's a V in my pocket. I wish you 'd send it to the old woman,-mother, — Mrs. Jane Carr, Cincinnati, with my love."

The Doctor stopped to speak to him, and then passed to the next, -a fairhaired boy, with three bullet-holes in his coat, one in his breast.

"Will I die?"- trying to keep his lips firm.

"Tut! tut! No. Only a flesh-wound. Drink that, and you'll be able to go back to the hospital, — be well in a week or two."

"I did not want to die, though I was not afraid,"-looking up anxiously; "but "

But the Doctor had left him, and, kneeling down in the mud, was turning the wounded Confederate over on his back, that he might see his face.

The boy saw him catch up his lantern and peer eagerly at him with shortened breath.

"What is it? Is he dead?”

"No, not dead,”-putting down the lantern.

the

But very near it, this man, John Gurney, -so near that it needed no deed of Blecker's to make him pass bound. Only a few moments' neglect. A bandage, a skilful touch or two, care in the hospitals, might save him.

But what claim had he on Paul that he should do this? For a moment the hot blood in the little Doctor's veins throbbed fiercely, as he rose slowly, and, taking his lantern, stood looking down.

"In an hour," glancing critically at him," he will be dead."

Something within him coolly added, "And Paul Blecker a murderer."

But he choked it down, and picked his steps through scorched winter stubble, dead horses, men, wagon - wheels, across the field; thinking, as he went, of Grey free, his child-love, true, coaxing, coming to his tired arms once more; of the home on the farm yonder, he meant to buy,-he, the rough, jolly farmer, and she, busy Grey, bustling Grey, with her loving, fussing ways. Why, it came like a flash to him! Yet, as it came, tugging at his heart with the whole strength of his blood, he turned, this poor, thwarted, passionate little Doctor, and began jogging back to the locustwoods, passing many wounded men of his own kith and spirit, and going back to Gurney.

Because he was his enemy.

"Thank God, I am not utterly debased!"— grinding the tobacco vehemently in his teeth.

He walked faster, seeing that the moon was going down, leaving the battle-field in shadow. Overhead, the sinking light, striking upward from the horizon, had worked the black dome into depths of fretted silver. Blecker saw it, though passion made his step unsteady and his eye dim. No man could do a mean, foul deed while God stretched out such a tem

ple-roof as that for his soul to live in, was the thought that dully touched his outer consciousness. But little Grey! If he could go home to her to-morrow, and, lifting her thin, tired face from the machine, hold it to his breast, and say, "You 're free now, forever!" O God! He stopped, pulling his coat across his breast in his clenched hands, then, after a moment, went on, his arms falling powerless.

"I'm a child! It is of no use to think of it! Never!". - his hard, black eyes, that in these last few months had grown sad and questioning as a child's, looking to the north hill, as he strode along, as though he were bidding some one good-bye. And when he came to the hillock and knelt down again beside Gurney, there was no malice in them. He was faithful in every touch and draught and probe. With the wish in his heart to thrust the knife into the heart of the unconscious man lying before him, he touched him as though he had been his brother.

Gurney, opening his eyes at last, saw the yellow, haggard face, in its fringe of black beard, as rigid as if cut out of stone, very near his own. The grave, hopeless eyes subdued him.