ions can, rose the ever-glorious
"Star-Spangled Banner," loftiest and most inspiring of national hymns.
Through its long, forceful measures, which have the sweep and ring of
marching battalions, swung the singers, with a passionate earnestness
that made every note and word glow with meaning. The swelling paean told
of the heroism and sacrifice with which the foundations of the Nation
were laid, of the glory to which the land had risen, and then its mood
changing to one of direness and wrath, it foretold the just punishment
of those who broke the peace of a happy land.

The mood of the Sardis people was that patriotic exaltation which
reigned in every city and village of the North on that memorable night
of April, 1861.

But Rachel and Harry had left far behind them this passion of the
multitude, which had set their own to throbbing, even as the roar of
a cannon will waken the vibrations of harp-strings. Around where they
stood was the peace of the night and sleep. The perfume of violets and
hyacinths, and of myriads of opening buds seemed shed by the moon with
her silvery rays through the soft, dewy air; a few nocturnal insects
droned hither and thither, and "drowsy tinklings lulled the distant
folds."

As their steps were arrested Rachel released her grasp from Harry's arm,
but he caught her hand before it fell to her side, and held it fast. She
turned her face frankly toward him, and he looked down with anxious eyes
upon the broad white forehead, framed in silken black hair, upon great
eyes, flaming with a meaning that he feared to interpret, upon the
eloquent lines about the mobile, sensitive mouth, all now lifted into
almost supernatural beauty by the moonlight's spiritualizing magic.

What he said he could never afterward recall. His first memory was that
of a pause in his speech, when he saw the ripe, red lips turned toward
him with a gesture of the proud head that was both an assent and
invitation. The kiss that he pressed there thrilled him with the
intoxication of unexpectedly rewarded love, and Rachel with the gladness
of triumph.

What they afterward said was as incoherent as the conversations of those
rapturous moments ever are.

"You know we leave in the morning?" he said, when at last it became
necessary for him to go.

"Yes," she answered calmly. "And perhaps it is better that it should
be so--that we be apart for a little while to consider this new-found
happiness and understand it. I shall be s