t one of those
miraculous crumbs to which there are twelve baskets of fragments: the
Linkum gunboats were down at the mouth of the river. Oh! heaven a boat's
length off! A day and night's drifting and rowing; then climbing the
side slaves, treading the deck freemen,--the shackles fallen, the hands
loosened, the soul saved!

But the boat? There was not such a thing along these banks. Improvise
one. That was not possible. Flor listened, and the wild gasps of hope
died out again into the dulness of despair. Some other time,--not this.
As she stood still, idly and hopelessly hearkening to the mutter of the
old women, with the patches of flickering fire-light falling on their
faces in strange play and revelation, there stole upon her ear a sweeter
and distincter sound, the voice of Miss Agatha, as, leaning out upon the
night, she sang a plaint that consorted with her melancholy mood,
learned in her Northern home in happier hours, without a thought of the
moment of misery that might make it real.

Sooner or later the storms shall beat
Over my slumber from head to feet;
Sooner or later the winds shall rave
In the long grass above my grave.

I shall not heed them where I lie,
Nothing their sound shall signify,
Nothing the headstone's fret of rain,
Nothing to me the dark day's pain.

Sooner or later the sun shall shine
With tender warmth on that mound of mine;
Sooner or later, in summer air,
Clover and violet blossom there.

I shall not feel in that deep-laid rest
The sheeted light fall over my breast,
Nor ever note in those hidden hours
The wind-blown breath of the tossing flowers.

Sooner or later the stainless snows
Shall add their hush to my mute repose;
Sooner or later shall slant and shift
And heap my bed with their dazzling drift.

Chill though that frozen pall shall seem,
Its touch no colder can make the dream
That recks not the sweet and sacred dread
Shrouding the city of the dead.

Sooner or later the bee shall come
And fill the noon with his golden hum;
Sooner or later on half-paused wing
The blue-bird's warble about me ring,--

Ring and chirrup and whistle with glee,
Nothing his music means to me,
None of these beautiful things shall know
How soundly their lover sleeps below.

Sooner or later, far out in the night,
The stars shall over me wing their flight;