The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89,
March, 1865, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865

Author: Various

Release Date: October 16, 2009 [EBook #30265]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XV.--MARCH, 1865.--NO. LXXXIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

THE STORY OF A YEAR.

I.

My story begins as a great many stories have begun within the last three
years, and indeed as a great many have ended; for, when the hero is
despatched, does not the romance come to a stop?

* * * * *

In early May, two years ago, a young couple I wot of strolled homeward
from an evening walk, a long ramble among the peaceful hills which
inclosed their rustic home. Into these peaceful hills the young man had
brought, not the rumor, (which was an old inhabitant,) but some of the
reality of war,--a little whiff of gunpowder, the clanking of a sword;
for, although Mr. John Ford had his campaign still before him, he wore a
certain comely air of camp-life which stamped him a very Hector to the
steady-going villagers, and a very pretty fellow to Miss Elizabeth
Crowe, his companion in this sentimental stroll. And was he not attired
in the great brightness of blue and gold which befits a freshly made
lieutenant? This was a strange sight for these happy Northern glades;
for, although the first Revolution had boomed awhile in their midst, the
honest yeomen who defended them were clad in sober homespun, and it is
well known that His Majesty's troops wore red.

These young people, I say, had been roaming. It was plain that they had
wandered into spots w