battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward;
then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes was
rebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at every
turn--they trod rebellion under their heels--they were every where, and
every where triumphant.

''Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting place
and time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on and
wonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded and
Washington guarded could not die! Three cheers--yes, nine--for the
Star-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!'

''Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of white
mist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone.
'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before,
while the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clear
again I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold and
quarreling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, while
cries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! I
closed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out the
voice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist:

''Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws away
the bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!'
Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more,
and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the
United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief.
But while I looked I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I
perceived that _the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each
was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and
palsied the arm and ate into the vitals_. Every second, one fell and
died, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp,
but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strange
woman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She was
silent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen hack asleep in
his chair, and drawing out my watch, I discovered that only ten minutes
had elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word.

''You have seen all--go!' was her first and last interruption to the
silence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awake
him, an