s of yesterday be but the memories of
a nightmare? They seemed too unreal for probability. Perhaps he was just
recovering consciousness after the delirium of a fever.

The walnut sticks in the fireplace popped as sharply as pistols, and he
trembled from head to foot.

"Heavens, I'm a bigger coward than ever," he said bitterly, and turning
himself painfully in bed, he fixed his eyes upon the wall. "I was led to
believe," he continued, "that after I had once been under fire, I
would cease to dread it. Now, it seems to me more dreadful than I ever
imagined it to be."

Aunt Debby's wheel hummed and droned still louder, but her pleasant
tones rode on the cadences like an Aeolian harp in a rising wind:

"Man may trouble and distress me,
'T will but drive me to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press me;
Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.
O, 'tis not in grief to harm me,
While Thy love is left to me.
O, 'twere not in joy to charm me,
Were that joy unmixed with Thee."

He wondered weakly why ther were no monasteries in this land and age, to
serve as harbors or refuge for those who shrank from the fearfulness of
war.

He turned over again wearily, and Aunt Debby, looking toward him,
encountered his wide-open eyes.

"Yer awake, air ye?" she said kindly. "Hope I didn't disturb you. I wuz
tryin' ter make ez little noise ez possible."

"No, you didn't rouse me. It's hard for me to sleep in daylight, even
when fatigued, as I am."

"Ef ye want ter git up now," she said, stopping the whell by pressing
the stick against a spoke, and laying the "roll" in her hand upon the
wheel-head, "I'll hev some breakfast fur ye in a jiffy. Ye kin rise an'
dress while I run down ter the spring arter a fresh bucket o' water."

She covered her head with a "slat sun-bonnet," which she took from a peg
in the wall, lifted a cedar waterpail from a shelf supported by other
long pegs, poured its contents into a large cast-iron teakettle swinging
over the fire, and whisked out of the door. Presently the notes of her
hymn mingled in plaintive harmony with the sparkling but no sweeter song
of a robin redbreast, twittering his delight in the warm sunshine amid
the crimson apples of the tree that overhung the spring.

"Will ye hev a fresh drink?" she asked Harry, on her return.

He took the gourdful of clear, cool water, which she offered him, and
drank heartily.

"Thet hez the name o'