he
had tortured her by remaining there for two whole days.

It was well on in the afternoon when she drove back to the city with Mr.
Brinsmade. Neither of them had eaten since morning, nor had they even
thought of hunger. Mr. Brinsmade was silent, leaning back in the corner
of the carriage, and Virginia absorbed in her own thoughts. Drawing near
the city, that dreaded sound, the rumble of drums, roused them. A shot
rang out, and they were jerked violently by the starting of the horses.
As they dashed across Walnut at Seventh came the fusillade. Virginia
leaned out of the window. Down the vista of the street was a mass of blue
uniforms, and a film of white smoke hanging about the columns of the old
Presbyterian Church Mr. Brinsmade quietly drew her back into the
carriage.

The shots ceased, giving place to an angry roar that struck terror to her
heart that wet and lowering afternoon. The powerful black horses galloped
on. Nicodemus tugging at the reins, and great splotches of mud flying in
at the windows. The roar of the crowd died to an ominous moaning behind
them. Then she knew that Mr. Brinsmade was speaking:-- "From battle and
murder, and from sudden death--from all sedition, privy conspiracy, and
rebellion,--Good Lord, deliver us."

He was repeating the Litany--that Litany which had come down through the
ages. They had chanted it in Cromwell's time, when homes were ruined and
laid waste, and innocents slaughtered. They had chanted it on the dark,
barricaded stairways of mediaeval Paris, through St. Bartholomew's night,
when the narrow and twisted streets, ran with blood. They had chanted it
in ancient India, and now it was heard again in the New World and the New
Republic of Peace and Good Will.

Rebellion? The girl flinched at the word which the good gentleman had
uttered in his prayers. Was she a traitor to that flag for which her
people had fought in three wars? Rebellion! She burned to blot it forever
from the book Oh, the bitterness of that day, which was prophecy of the
bitterness to come.

Rain was dropping as Mr. Brinsmade escorted her up her own steps. He held
her hand a little at parting, and bade her be of good cheer. Perhaps he
guessed something of the trial she was to go through that night alone
with her aunt, Clarence's mother. Mr. Brinsmade did not go directly home.
He went first to the little house next door to his. Mrs. Brice and Judge
Whipple were in the parlor: What passed between them there