go into the mad streets so grief-stricken, so alone. Dorothy is long
dead. Isabel is lost to me. My boy is away. My home is haunted with
loneliness. I would be rich if Douglas was to be too. Now he is rich, I
am poor; he is poor, I am rich. Men are marching, bugles calling. The
city roars. At the foot of Clark Street I see the masts of scores of
sailing craft. Chicago has become a great mart.

The June sky is blue and cool, and great white clouds sail through it so
indifferently. They were here when I first came to Chicago; here when
the French explored the wilderness. Here they are now just the same; and
Illinois has more than a million souls, and every heart carries the
burden of war. Over them this sky, these clouds. They do not care.

It seems but a few minutes and the words go about the streets: "Douglas
is dead." The newsboys cry it soon. I am prepared, but the city is not.
It is shocked and wounded. Douglas is dead! This voice that spoke to us
so lately is stilled. The great man who submerged everything of self in
a cause of many is no more. I am dumb, a few tears ooze from my eyes;
but on I go through the crowds. Now I shall throw myself more than ever
into the work of the war. I pass a theater where speeches are being
made. From it I hear a voice singing "Annie Laurie." I stop to look at a
sign containing the name of Madam Zante. And I go in to hear her sing. I
draw near her to get a seat. It is Zoe!

Zoe! I send up my name by an usher. The word comes back quickly to join
her behind the scenes. There she is waiting for me. And we fall into
each other's arms and sob. She is all I have left in the world except
little Reverdy. I hold her from me. She is majestic, glorious in the
maturity of great beauty, intelligence, art. She has long been a singer
of note under this name of Madam Zante. What of Fortescue? She ran away
from him. What was the explanation of Fortescue's trick? So far as we
could guess at it, only that he had used the murder of another woman to
get the property that he had learned from Zoe that she had inherited.
But we had no time to talk of this now. "Come with me, Zoe, to my
house." And Zoe came. But she was soon off again to nurse in the
hospitals.

It is November, 1861. Word comes to us that Reverdy's boy, Amos, has
been killed in the battle of Belmont. Douglas has now been in sleep five
months; now Amos is a sacrifice to the war. He had joined Captain
Grant's army against Sarah's fierce pr