paralyzed, and my thoughts clung to the minute detail of the ground,--the
persons about, the mountain path, and most of all the half-stifled cry that
spoke the broken heart,--with a tenacity that verged upon madness.

A court-martial was appointed to inquire into the affair; and although I
have been since told that my deportment was calm, and my answers were firm
and collected, yet I remember nothing of the proceedings.

The inquiry, through a feeling of delicacy for the friends of him who was
no more, was made as brief and as private as possible. Beaufort proved the
facts which exonerated me from any imputation in the matter; and upon the
same day the court delivered the decision: "That Lieutenant O'Malley was
not guilty of the charges preferred against him, and that he should be
released from arrest, and join his regiment."

Nothing could be more kind and considerate than the conduct of my brother
officers,--a hundred little plans and devices for making me forget the
late unhappy event were suggested and practised,--and I look back to that
melancholy period, marked as it was by the saddest circumstance of my life,
as one in which I received more of truly friendly companionship than even
my palmiest days of prosperity boasted.

While, therefore, I deeply felt the good part my friends were performing
towards me, I was still totally unsuited to join in the happy current of
their daily pleasures and amusements. The gay and unreflecting character of
O'Shaughnessy, the careless merriment of my brother officers, jarred upon
my nerves, and rendered me irritable and excited; and I sought in lonely
rides and unfrequented walks, the peace of spirit that calm reflection and
a firm purpose for the future rarely fail to lead to.

There is in deep sorrow a touch of the prophetic. It is at seasons when the
heart is bowed down with grief, and the spirit wasted with suffering, that
the veil which conceals the future seems to be removed, and a glance, short
and fleeting as the lightning flash, is permitted us into the gloomy valley
before us.

Misfortunes, too, come not singly,--the seared heart is not suffered to
heal from one affliction ere another succeeds it; and this anticipation
of the coming evil is, perhaps, one of the most poignant features of
grief,--the ever-watchful apprehension, the ever-rising question, "What
next?" is a torture that never sleeps.

This was the frame of my mind for several days after I returned to my