e six stormy months."

When the hearty old captain had left us, and we found our way again
across the marshes, the solitude of the night and stormy sky and the
moaning sea became oppressive again, and took on all their old meaning
of death and disaster. But we looked back at the square black shadow
of the little house upon the headland with its fluttering flag, and
at the red light burning in the window, and felt a sense of protection
and trust in the government which we had never known before.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

THE EUTAW FLAG.[A]

In the early spring of the year 1780 two ladies attired in morning
_neglige_ were sitting together in the parlor of a fine old country
mansion in lower South Carolina. The remains of two or three huge
hickory logs were smouldering on the capacious hearth, for the cool
air of the early morning made fires still comfortable, though as
the day wore on and the southern sun gathered power the small-paned
windows which opened on the lawn had been raised to admit the soft
breeze, which already whispered of opening flowers and breathed the
sweet fragrance of the jessamine and magnolia. These same embers would
have furnished heat enough in a house of modern construction to have
made the room intolerable, but as they reposed upon their bed of ashes
in the depths of the wide-mouthed chimney-place, lazily sending
up their little curls of smoke, they served only to create a
draught-power which cooled the apartment by the free circulation of
the flower-scented air. The wide lawn was green with the fresh
spring grass, amid which a lively company of field-larks were busily
searching for grasshoppers and grubs, their gay yellow breasts and
jetty breastpins glancing in the sunlight as they raised their heads
from time to time to utter their soft whistling notes. The blackbirds
puffed their feathers and sounded their singular call from the
branches of the old pecan tree, and the flashing of the oriole
enlivened the sombre foliage of the enormous live-oaks in the avenue.
Three or four deer-hounds were stretched about under the broad
benches of the piazza or snapped at the flies under the shade of the
rose-bushes, already heavy with bloom, paying no attention to the
tame doe which jingled her little bell over their very heads as she
stretched up to browse the young shoots of "rose-candy" above them.
Two mocking-birds, one perched on the chimney-stack of the house, and
the other on a straggling sp