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bility of her father being taken, and regarded it with less despair since she knew she had Jack's help to fall back upon. She would return to England and see the last of her father and then return to Jack.

It was late at the office to which she had been directed, and the lift man had gone home, but she tramped up a long flight of stairs and found a clerk waiting also to go home, but his master was still there, engaged with some one; it was too late for him to see any one else that evening.

"At any rate can you take my name in ?"

He nodded rather discouragingly.

"Miss Hamilton," she said, then correcting herself and reddening as the clerk's interest awakened, "Miss Henshawe."

But there was no need for her to be announced, a door opened beyond the outer office where they stood and a voice with some slight American intonation

said outside in the corridor, "Good night, Mr. Finacane."

She started and stepped forward to intercept the man who had hunted down her father, with some vague idea that he might have powers that others had not, that he would be the man who could tell her the worst that was known.

A tall square-shouldered man passed the doorway and she gave a slight cry, which made him turn towards her, then she said one word, "Jack!" and the truth was driven home to her brain and she fell fainting at his feet.

She never saw him again. She stood alone on the Cunard wharf when the Arcadia steamed out on her return

voyage. She had seen her father taken on board between two men and she knew he must be there somewhere, but she was thankful not to see him. That night she came back to the same spot, it was the only way to the water side she knew, and in the waters of the Hudson ended the loneliness of the Solitary Girl.

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HAT had been in the cool grey of that summer morning a dewy country lane, marked only by a few waggon tracks that never croached upon its grassy border, and indented only by the faint footprints of a crossing fox or coon, was now, before high noon, already crushed, beaten down, and trampled out of all semblance of its former graciousness. The heavy springless jolt of gun carriage and caisson had cut deeply through the middle track; the hoofs of crowding cavalry had struck down and shredded the wayside vines and bushes to bury them under a cloud of following dust, and the short, plunging double quick of infantry had trodden out this hideous ruin into one dusty level chaos. Along that rudely widened highway useless muskets, torn accoutrements, knapsacks, caps and articles of clothing were scattered, with here and there the larger wrecks of broken-down waggons, roughly thrown aside into the ditch to make way for the living current. For two hours the greater part of an Army Corps had passed and repassed that way, but, coming or going, always with faces turned eagerly towards an open slope on the right which ran parallel to the lane.

And yet nothing was to be seen there. For two hours a grey and bluish cloud, rent and shaken

with explosion after explosion, but always closing and thickening after each discharge, was all that had met their eyes. Nevertheless, into this ominous cloud solid moving masses of men in grey or blue had that morning melted away, or emerged from it only as scattered fragments that crept, crawled, ran or clung together in groups, to be followed and overtaken in the rolling vapour.

But for the last half hour the desolated track had stretched empty and deserted. While there was no cessation of the rattling, crackling and detonations on the fateful slope beyond, it had still been silent. Once or twice it had been crossed by timid, hurrying wings, and frightened and hesitating little feet, or later by skulkers and stragglers from the main column who were tempted to enter it from the hedges and bushes where they had been creeping and hiding. Suddenly a prolonged yell from the hidden slope beyond the nearest sound that had yet been heard from that ominous distance-sent them to cover again. It was followed by the furious galloping of horses in the lane, and a handsome, red-capped officer, accompanied by an orderly, dashed down the track, wheeled, leaped the hedge, rode out on the slope and halted. In another instant a cloud of dust came whirling down the lane after him. Out of it strained the heavy shoulders and tightened chain-traces of six frantic horses dragging the swaying gun that in this tempest of motion alone seemed passive and helpless with an awful

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panting horses with their drivers gave a momentary glimpse of the nearest gun already in position and of the four erect figures beside it. The yell that seemed to have evoked this sudden apparition again sounded nearer; a blinding flash broke from the gun, which was instantly hidden by the closing group around it, and a deafening crash with the high ringing of metal ran down the lane. A column of white, woolly smoke arose as another flash broke beside it. This was quickly followed by another and another, with a response from the gun first fired, until the whole slope shook and thundered. And the smoke, no longer white and woolly, but darkening and thickening as with unburnt grains of gunpowder, mingled into the one ominous vapour, and driving

the apparition was as instantly cloven by flame from the two nearest guns, and went down in a gush of smoke and roar of sound. So level was the delivery and so close the impact, that a space seemed suddenly cleared between, in which the whirling of the shattered remnants of the charging cavalry was distinctly seen, and the shouts and oaths of the inextricably struggling mass became plain and articulate. Then a gunner serving the nearest piece suddenly dropped his swab and seized a carbine, for out of the whirling confusion before them a single rider was seen galloping furiously towards the gun.

The red-capped young officer rode forward and knocked up the gunner's weapon with his sword. For in that rapid glance he had seen that the rider's reins were

hanging loosely on the neck of his horse, who was still dashing forwards with the frantic impetus of the charge, and that the youthful figure of the rider-wearing the stripes of a lieutenant-although still erect, exercised no control over the animal. The face was boyish, blonde and ghastly; the eyes were set and glassy. It seemed as if Death itself were charging the gun.

Within a few feet of it the horse swerved before a brandished rammer, and striking the cheeks of the gun carriage pitched his inanimate rider across the gun. The hot blood of the dead man smoked on the hotter brass with the reek of the shambles, and bespattered the hand of the gunner who still mechanically served the vent. As they lifted the dead body down the order came to "cease firing.' For the yells from below had ceased too; the rattling and grinding was receding with the smoke further to the left. ominous central cloud parted for a brief moment and showed the unexpected sun glittering down the slope upon a near and peaceful river.

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The young artillery officer had dismounted and was now gently examining the dead man. His breast had been crushed by a fragment of shell; he must have died instantly. The same missile had cut the chain of a locket which slipped from his opened coat. The officer picked it up with a strange feeling-perhaps because he was conscious himself of wearing a similar one; perhaps because it might give him some clue to the man's identity. It contained only the photograph of a pretty girl, a tendril of fair hair, and the word "Sally." In the breast pocket was a sealed letter with the inscription, "For Miss Sally Dows To be delivered if I fall by the mudsill's hand." smile came over the officer's face; he was about to hand the articles to a sergeant, but changed his mind and put them in his pocket.

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"And you seem to have had close work too," added the general, pointing to the dead man.

The young officer hurriedly explained. The general nodded, saluted, and passed on. But a youthful aide airily lingered.

"The old man's feeling good, Courtland," he said. "We've rolled 'em up all along the line. It's all over now. In point of fact I reckon you've fired the last round in this particular fratricidal engagement."

The last round! Courtland remained silent, looking abstractedly at the man it had crushed and broken at his feet.

"And I shouldn't wonder if you got your gold leaf for to-day's work. But who's your sunny southern friend here?" he added, following his companion's eyes.

Courtland repeated his story a little more seriously, which however failed to subdue the young aide's levity. "So he concluded to stop over," he interrupted cheerfully. "But," looking at the letter and photograph, "I say-look here! 'Sally Dows'? Why, there was another man picked up yesterday with a letter to the same girl! Doe Murphy has it. And, by Jove! the same picture too!-eh? I say, Sally must have gathered in the boys, and raked down the whole pile! here, Courty! you might get Doe Murphy's letter and hunt her up when this cruel war is over. Say you're fulfilling a sacred trust!' See? Good idea, old man! Ta-ta!" and he trotted quickly after his superior.

Look

Courtland remained with the letter and photograph in his hand, gazing abstractedly after him. The smoke had rolled quite away from the fields on the left, but still hung heavily down the south on the heels of the flying cavalry. A long bugle call swelled up musically from below. The freed sun caught the white flags of two field hospitals in the woods and glanced tranquilly on the broad, cypressfringed, lazy-flowing and cruel but beautiful southern river, which had all unseen crept so smilingly that morning through the very heart of the battle.

CHAPTER I.

THE two o'clock express from Redlands to Forestville, Georgia, had been proceeding with the languid placidity of the river whose banks it skirted for more than two hours. But unlike the river it had stopped frequently; sometimes at recognised stations and villages, sometimes at

the apparition of straw-hatted and linencoated natives in the solitude of pine woods, where, after a decent interval of cheery conversation with the conductor and engineer, it either took the stranger on board, or relieved him of his parcel, letter, basket, or even the vocal message with which he was charged. Much of Much of the way lay through pine-barren and swampy woods which had never been cleared or cultivated; much through decayed settlements and ruined villages that had remained unchanged since the War of the Rebellion now three years past. There were vestiges of the severity of a former military occupation; the blackened timbers of railway bridges still unrepaired; and along the line of a certain memorable march sections of iron rails taken from the torn-up track, roasted in bonfires and bent while red-hot around the trunks of trees, were still to be seen. These mementoes of defeat seemed to excite neither revenge nor the energy to remove them; the dull apathy which had succeeded the days of hysterical passion and convulsion still lingered; even the slow improvement that could be detected was marked by the languor of convalescence. The helplessness of a race, hitherto dependent upon certain barbaric conditions or political place and power, unskilled in invention, and suddenly confronted with the necessity of personal labour, was visible everywhere. Eyes that but three short years before had turned vindictively to the North, now gazed wistfully to that quarter for help and direction. They scanned eagerly the faces of their energetic and prosperous neighbours and quondam foes upon the verandahs of

southern hotels and the decks of southern steamboats, and were even now watching from a group in the woods the windows of the halted train, where the faces appeared of two men of manifestly different types, but still alien to the country in dress, features, and accent.

Two negroes were slowly loading the engine tender from a wood pile. The rich brown smoke of turpentine knots was filling the train with its stinging fragrance. The elder of the two northern passengers, with sharp New England angles in his face, impatiently glanced at his watch.

"Of all created shiftlessness, this beats everything! Why couldn't we have taken in enough wood to last the ten miles further to the terminus when we last stopped? And why in thunder, with all this firing up, can't we go faster?'

The younger passenger, whose quiet, well-bred face seemed to indicate more discipline of character, smiled.

"If you really wish to know-and as we've only ten miles further to go-I'll show you why. Come with me."

He led the way through the car to the platform and leaped down. Then he pointed significantly to the rails below them. His companion started. The metal was scaling off in thin strips from the rails, and in some places its thickness had been reduced a quarter of an inch, while in others the projecting edges were torn off, or hanging in iron shreds, so that the wheels actually ran on the narrow central strip. It seemed marvellous that the train could keep the track.

"Now you know why we don't go more than five miles an hour, and-are thankful that we don't," said the younger traveller quietly.

"But this is disgraceful!-criminal!" ejaculated the other nervously.

"Not at their rate of speed," returned the younger man. "The crime would be in going faster. And now you can understand why a good deal of the other progress in this State is obliged to go as slowly over their equally decaying and rotten foundations. You can't rush things here as we do in the north."

The other passenger shrugged his shoulders as they remounted the platform, and the train moved on. It was not the first time that the two fellow travellers had differed, although their mission was a common one. The elder, Mr. Cyrus. Drummond, was the vice-president of a large northern land and mill company, which had bought extensive tracts of land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the consulting surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's opinions were a good deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a self-satisfied and righteous ignorance of the actual conditions and limitations of the people with whom he was to deal; while the younger man, who had served through the war with distinction, retained a soldier's respect and esteem for his late antagonists, with a conscientious and thoughtful observation of their character. Although he had resigned from the army, the fact that he had previously graduated at West Point with high honours had given him preferment in this technical appointment, and his knowledge of the country and its people made him a valuable counseller. And it was a fact that the country people

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