led against the river's current, while horror held her. Horror lest
her father at that moment be in mortal agony amongst the heaps left by
the battle's surges; heaps in which, like mounds of ashes, the fire was
not yet dead. Fearful tales she had heard in the prison hospitals of
wounded men lying for days in the Southern sun between the trenches at
Vicksburg, or freezing amidst the snow and sleet at Donelson.

Was her bitterness against the North not just? What a life had been
Colonel Carvel's! It had dawned brightly. One war had cost him his wife.
Another, and he had lost his fortune, his home, his friends, all that was
dear to him. And that daughter, whom he loved best in all the world, he
was perchance to see no more.

Mrs. Colfax, yawning, had taken a book and gone to bed. Still Virginia
sat on the porch, while the frogs sang of rain, and the lightning
quivered across the eastern sky. She heard the crunch of wheels in the
gravel.

A bar of light, peopled by moths, slanted out of the doorway and fell on
a closed carriage. A gentleman slowly ascended the steps. Virginia
recognized him as Mr. Brinsmade.

"Your cousin Clarence has come home, my dear," he said. "He was among the
captured at Vicksburg, and is paroled by General Grant."

Virginia gave a little cry and started forward. But he held her hands.

"He has been wounded!"

"Yes," she exclaimed, "yes. Oh, tell me, Mr. Brinsmade, tell me--all--"

"No, he is not dead, but he is very low. Mr. Russell has been kind enough
to come with me."

She hurried to call the servants. But they were all there in the light,
in African postures of terror,--Alfred, and Sambo, and Mammy Easter, and
Ned. They lifted the limp figure in gray, and carried it into the hall
chamber, his eyes closed, his face waxen under a beard brown and shaggy.
Heavily, Virginia climbed the stairs to break the news to her aunt.

There is little need to dwell on the dark days which followed--Clarence
hanging between life and death. That his life was saved was due to
Virginia and to Mammy Easter, and in no particle to his mother. Mrs.
Colfax flew in the face of all the known laws of nursing, until Virginia
was driven to desperation, and held a council of war with Dr. Polk. Then
her aunt grew jealous, talked of a conspiracy, and threatened to send for
Dr. Brown--which Dr. Polk implored her to do. By spells she wept, when
they quietly pushed her from the room and locked the door. She would
creep in