ll; but certainly he felt that
he deserved the former in their eyes, who had shown him so much
mercy. In less than ten minutes he had passed over the intermediate
ground, his ear achingly on the stretch to catch the sounds of
horses' hoofs on the opposite' bank--that bank which, not two hours
previously, he had traversed with a bright hope, if not with a
heart wholly free from anxiety--but in vain. Furiously, wildly,
he rode into the fort. He was haggard, pale, and dripping from the
immersion he had so recently undergone. His first inquiry at the
gate, on entering, was if Mrs. Ronayne had returned. Being answered
in the negative, life itself seemed to be annihilated; and, overcome
by the overwhelming agony he had endured for the last two hours,
he gave a frightful shriek of despair, and, on gaining the centre
of the parade, fell fainting from his horse to the ground, as we
have already seen at the close of our opening chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

"My particular grief is of so floodgate and overbearing nature,
that it engluts and swallows other sorrows."
--_Othello._

Never did day close more cheerlessly on the hearts of men, than
that which succeeded to the occurrences detailed in our last chapter.
Yea, it was a terrible blow which had been inflicted upon all. The
sun of the existence of each, from the commanding officer to
the youngest drummer-boy, had been dimmed; and many a weather-beaten
soldier, grown grey in the natural apathy of age, now found himself
unable to restrain the rising tear. Not a woman, not a child arrived
at the years of consciousness, but missed and mourned over the
absence of her who had been, not merely the favorite, but the
beloved of the whole garrison.

The young Virginian himself was, for the moment, the only exception
to this mental anguish. When taken up from the ground to which he
had fallen, and borne to his room, he was in a high fever and
delirious from excitement--unconscious of everything around. He
did not manifest a sense of the nature and extent of his grief by
exclamations of despair, or reference to the past, but lay like
one stupified, his cheek highly flushed, his eyes fixed and upturned,
his hands clasped across his chest, his breathing scarcely audible,
and seemingly without the power of combination of thought, or the
exercise of memory.

When Von Voltenberg soon afterwards followed, he at once saw that
congestion of the brain was rapidly forming, and imme