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Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife, with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of them in far-away Lancaster.

One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery. On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus bidding somebody

Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw, just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.

"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me into the double darkness.

"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty calls."

"Is it so dangerous?"

His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for the halter!"

I gave him no pledge but a look.

He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket, came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!" and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry- hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.

"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us. Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to tell the news as he would have been to own the money.

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