itened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the
dim empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only a dull
intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing flakes of plaster
from the walls, or sliding fragments of glass from the shattered
windows. A shell, lifted from the ominous distance, hung uncertain in
the air and then descended swiftly through the roof; the whole house
dilated with flame for an instant, smoke rolled slowly from the windows,
and even the desolate chimneys started into a hideous mockery of life,
and then all was still again. At such awful intervals the sun shone out
brightly, touched the green of the still sleeping woods and the red and
white of a flower in the garden, and something in a gray uniform writhed
out of the dust of the road, staggered to the wall, and died.

A mile down this road, growing more and more obscure with those rising
and falling apparitions or the shapeless and rugged heaps terrible in
their helpless inertia by hedge and fence, arose the cemetery hill.
Taken and retaken thrice that afternoon, the dead above it far
outnumbered the dead below; and when at last the tide of battle swept
around its base into the dull, reverberating woods, and it emerged from
the smoke, silenced and abandoned, only a few stragglers remained. One
of them, leaning on his musket, was still gloomily facing the woods.

"Joseph Corbin," said a low, hurried voice.

He started and glanced quickly at the tombs around him. Perhaps it was
because he had been thinking of the dead,--but the voice sounded like
HIS. Yet it was only the SISTER, who had glided, pale and haggard, from
the thicket.

"They are coming through the woods," she said quickly. "Run, or you'll
be taken. Why do you linger?"

"You know why," he said gloomily.

"Yes, but you have done yo' duty. You have done his work. The task is
finished now, and yo' free."

He did not reply, but remained gazing at the woods.

"Joseph," she said more gently, laying her trembling hand on his arm,
"Joseph, fly--and--take me with you. For I was wrong, and I want you to
forgive me. I knew your heart was not in this, and I ought not to have
asked you. Joseph--listen! I never wanted to avenge myself nor HIM when
I spat on your face. I wanted to avenge myself on HER. I hated her,
because I thought she wanted to work upon you and use you for herself."

"Your mother," he said, looking at her.

"No," she said, with widely opened eyes, "you know w