t I may have the power
of happiness and misery. Go!--or wish that you had done so, till the
very day you die!"

Her arm was stretched out with a queenly gesture, at once of warning and
command. Tom Leslie obeyed, with such an effort as one sometimes makes
in a forced arousing from sleep. He took one more glance at the
motionless face and form, then dashed through the curtain and let it
fall behind him. Joe Harris had partially recovered from her excitement,
and sat beside Bell, with her face on the latter's shoulder. She roused
herself and even attempted a laugh with some success, when the voice of
Leslie was heard; and if for one instant the allegiance of the young man
had wavered in the presence of the unnatural and the overwhelming, there
was something in that bright, clear, good face, only temporarily
shadowed by her late excitement, calculated to restore him at once to
thought and to truth.

With the heavy crash of thunder which had accompanied if it had not
caused the fright of the young girl, the storm seemed to have culminated
and spent itself; and by this time the rain had nearly ceased. Not a
word passed between the three as to what had occurred to either--any
conversation on that subject was naturally reserved for another place
and a later hour. The black girl came out again from behind the curtain
and received with a "Thank you, Monsieur!" and a curtsey the half eagle
which dropped into her hand. Leslie left the ladies alone for a moment,
ran down to the door and found a carriage; and in a few moments, without
further adventure, the three were on their way up-town, the journalist
to return again to his evening avocations, after accompanying the two,
whose disordered nerves he scarcely yet dared trust alone, to their
place of destination.

If during that ride the hand of Josephine Harris, a little hot and
feverish from late excitement, accidentally fell again into his own and
rested there as if it rather liked the position--whose business was it,
except their own?

CHAPTER XV.

A PEEP AT CAMP LYON AND THE TWO HUNDREDTH REGIMENT--DISCIPLINE AND THE
DICE-BOX--HOW SEVEN HUNDRED MEN CAN BE SQUEEZED INTO THREE.

"I am going to West Falls again in a few days--that is, if we do not get
orders for Washington," Colonel Egbert Crawford said, speaking to his
cousin, a few chapters back, as may be remembered. By which he meant, of
course, if he meant anything, that the Two Hundredth Regiment, with the
rai