As the speaker paused, I lifted my eyes to the face of the backwoodsman. I hardly knew him for the same man. With parted lips he had drawn nearer and was staring at the guide. Already my own thoughts were burning in my brain, as I beheld the transformation in our host. I would have found my tongue, but I was held as under a spell. Meanwhile, the guide, in his turn oblivious of all around him, with his lips was simply telling, at intervals, of the life he was living over again.

"The next day, boys, was Sharpsburg. In the thickest of the charge at the bridge I heard him shout: 'Great God!-Bob!' and I saw him take quick aim at a young Yank officer who was makin' for our colors. Then, suddenly, without firin', I can swear it, without firin', he pushed forward, clubbin' every man aimin' that way and actin' like mad, and he reached the cussed Yank jist as he was fallin' by my ball.-Ahem! The smoke chokes me, that's all. Bullets was flyin' right thick in that direction, but afore I could think, we was forced back-and-and-in the confusion-wal', I los' sight o' my boy in spite o' the responsibility I felt, and when roll was called "—the guide's lips moved, but gave no sound. The backwoodsman was motionless. There was a furnace in my breast. One word andBut the guide's voice was returning to him. "A month later," he continued, painfully, abstractedly, "another letter come for him. As I was right sure Harry was no more, and as I couldn't find his brother, I thought as how I might open it, fer I was sort er a brother. It read somethin' like this:

66 HARRY: Sad news. Bob at Antietam has made permanent papa's inflexibil'ty. He's even more bitter'n when he sent those letters back. My old mal-mal-sickness [that wasn't jest the word; she wrote nice] has returned. I can only hope to see the leaves fall."

The guide hesitated a moment and then drawing a yellow paper out of a rusty wallet, said: "Here; I may as well confess; I've got that letter right here; took it out o' my trunk th' other day. This 's it:

"Leaves fall. But let me say, before it is too late, that that letter sent with the package was not voluntary on my part. I may be wronging others as well as myself in writing this, but I have done my best to be open and frank in everything. It was not my fault if anyone was deceived, and why should I not take this, perhaps my last, opportunity to set right a wrong that I did against my own better judgment. All I can say is, don't blame Bob. It is not his fault. It is no one's fault, it is fate, and it is best for you.

"Let me hear from you once more and all will be well.

"In heaven or on earth.

"Too late for Harry, poor girl, too late."

The voice died lower on his breast. my eyes from him.

FANNIE."

away into silence. Our host's head sank lower and Though my heart had turned to lead I could not take

With a deep sigh, the guide resumed once more, still unmindful of our presence and both of them unmindful of me: "For a time, I'll allow as how I did think he might ha' reckoned he's killed the rival that he s'posed his 'Fannie' had chosen, and remorse had druv him away. But thar in the Springfield arsenal relic room was that very same musket, the letters on the stock as plain as the day they was cut, 'Fannie' and 'Yale, '63'-thar was no mistakin'.

"Oh "-turning to me-"you mought call it 'romance o' the war' in yer fine talk if yer liked-they're solemn facts to me; jest reckerlect he warn't none o' yer silly-nillies. The bar'l o' that piece was bent and had a

big stain rusted on it, but the charge of powder was still in it.

"They told me as how the 'relic' was brung in by some Connecticut Yank, but I put the case afore 'em and arter I'd sent up my old papers, they acknowledged my claim, so to-day that musket-."

The quick touch of our host's hand on John's shoulder brought him back from his trance with a half groan and me to my feet, the pent-up blood rushing through my veins. The manner of the interruption was such as I had marked among men when they meet an old school-fellow or-a comrade; but alas! for my speedy conclusions. Before the guide's mind could return to his surroundings, the courtly backwoodsman had said, in the forbidding tone which made other speech ridiculous, certainly useless, “I beg pardon, sir," and was gone.

The guide stared in perplexity at the spot in the darkness where our host had vanished, and there I left him—the avowed antagonist of sentiment -as I entered the cabin. Tearing the margin from an old newspaper, I wrote and left on a chest these words:

HARRY: I am the "cursed Yank" of the guide's story. Life was spared to me as well as you. Was it not that I might learn the depth of your nobility and plead for your forgiveness? -ville, Mass. Вов.

When I returned the guide still sat by the fire and the only reference he ever made thereafter, either to the "simple facts" or to the strange interruption, was this one word, with significant inflection, as, obedient to my orders, he started out with me into the night again—" W-w-woodchopper ?"

And in vain have I looked since then for an answer to my note-my forgiveness on earth.

I

AN EPISODE OF BULL RUN.

BY WILLIAM H. HENRY.

'N a portion of the plateau on which was fought the battle of Bull Run, there stands the house now owned and occupied by the aged Mr. Hugh Henry, who has furnished the following interesting incidents:

On that memorable Sabbath-July 21, 1861-nearly thirty-eight years ago, the Henry mansion was occupied by Mrs. Judith Henry, her daughter and two sons. Mrs. Henry was then eighty-five years old and bedridden from age and infirmity. She was the daughter of Louden Carter, Sr., and was born within a mile of where she now lies buried. Her husband, Dr. Isaac Henry, was the son of Hugh Henry, one of the founders of the first Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and a conspicuous patriot in the Revolution. Dr. Henry was a surgeon on board the United States frigate "Constellation," commanded by Commodore Truxton, which captured the French frigate "La Insurgeante," and had a conflict with "La Vengeance."

Το go back to the scene of our story on that summer day, it was around Mrs. Henry's home that the battle raged in all its fury. General Bee and Colonels Carter and Fischer were killed close to her door and inside her yard. Griffin's Battery was lost and retaken three times in a hand-to-hand fight. There every gunner was killed, regiment after regiment coming to the rescue, determined never to yield their guns. There Tyler, Heintzelman and Hunter, with their divisions, battled from dawn to dusk. In the intense heat of that summer-day, many who went forth to fight were overcome in half an hour and compelled to fall back in the shade, dying from sheer exhaustion, their tongues hanging out and their faces black as coal. The bodies of the young and brave lay thickly strewn over the lawn, which was so covered with blood that it resembled a crimson carpet, while wounded horses galloped madly over the bodies of the dead and dying, frantic with pain. The bands were scattered, some attending to the wounded while others sought shelter in the thickets from the storm of shot and shell. There were nearly 30,000 engaged in this butchery all over the Bull Run plateau.

When Ellen Henry and her brother saw that their house was becoming the centre of the battlefield for the contending forces, they carried their mother to a ravine some distance from the house, thinking she would be safer there. As the battle progressed, however, and shot and shell fell around them, they took Mrs. Henry back to the house and placed her in bed again. The house was soon transformed into a hospital, and Mrs.

Henry died among the wounded and dying soldiers, killed by the bursting of a shell in her room. Her daughter never left her bedside, and although the house was pierced through and through, both the son and daughter miraculously escaped. In the anxiety for their mother they seemed to lose all fear for their own safety.

That that estimable old lady, who had spent almost a century of a peaceful Christian life in this secluded spot, should die in the midst of such a battle, wounded three times by shots flying through her room, seems a strange dispensation of Providence. Yet even amidst the din of battle, and the groans of the dead and dying, the aged sufferer lived to say that her mind was tranquil and that she died in peace, a peace that the roar of battle and the horrors of death could not disturb.

The house, after the battle, was pillaged and left in ruins—the grounds which had been the scene of two great battles had not the vestige of a house or fence upon it at the close of the war.

There now stands upon the ground a small frame house, in front of which are the grave and monument of Mrs. Henry, with the following inscription:

MURFREESBORO-A REVERIE.

By J. H. CARNEY.

AST month it was my privilege to visit scenes on which thirty years ago the eyes of the civilized world were fixed.

L

Seated at midnight in an open window at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, memory brought back sad pictures of the terrible past now so happily changed. The soft Kentucky breeze, fragrant with the breath of flowers and buds, was idly fluttering my window curtains, distilling the very balm of rest and peace. Without, the moon was silvering roof, tree and garden, and silence lay over this quaint, sleeping city of bloody, tragic history—a silence broken only by the deep, solemn tones of Christ Church bells tolling the midnight hour, just as solemnly as they did through all the dreadful revelry of shot and shell, anguish and death, thirty years ago.

On those plains over there beyond the city, now lying in a dark and silent shroud, more than one hundred thousand Union soldiers were quietly sleeping that fatal December evening-too many of them their last sleep on earth. The flower of the North was there, fresh from college and forum and counting-house and workshop-mothers' boys, the heroes of bright-eyed sweethearts, the papas of lisping curly-headed tots, the heart's life of loving wives in the far-off Northern homes; there they were, wrapped in slumber, bright visions of home and loved ones floating before them, and the death angel, unseen, hovering over all. I think sadly this night over my own near relatives who were lost in that gallant array.

Stretched in front of the sleeping army were a number of dark, muzzled cannon, whose deep throats were on the morrow to vomit forth a sulphurous whirlwind of fiery hail, and open up one of the bloodiest tragedies in history. And the heroic leaders, what of them? Back there behind the city, in an old house, which was afterward swept away in the red tide of war, were gathered in stern and solemn council the men on whose words a loyal nation depended in this supreme and breathless hour. Rosecrans, in all the flower of his imperial manhood, was there; the lion-hearted Sheridan; the loved and knightly Buell-heroes all.

And where are they to-night? And where are the gallant divisions they led to certain but sublime defeat? This gentle midnight wind brushes over those plains where they once trod, and through those streets, where thousands of them were massed in close array waiting for the signal to assault; but the heroes are gone, and to me this soft wind comes laden with sighs