y very young, very small
and very girlish, though there was something about her which even in
that dim light gave the impression that she was not a little girl, but a
woman.

So much the two soldiers saw, while neither of the occupants of the shed
seemed to be aware of their presence; but Webster, an intensely
practical man and more fertile in resources than overflowing with
delicacy, was not quite satisfied with the view obtained, and instantly
determined to improve it.

"Wait here--I am going for a light," he said, and stepping hastily from
the door he ran to the burning embers of the house, caught the end of a
piece of pine scantling of which the other was in full blaze, and in a
moment more entered the door of the shed, his novel torch throwing an
odd, ghastly light upon all the objects within the little building. Then
and not till then did the intruders become aware that they stood face to
face with one who was dying, in the old man on the pallet,--and with a
woman of a rare and almost startling order of beauty, in the young girl
who knelt beside him. Her form, as they could see, even in her kneeling
position, was almost childish in the shortness of its stature and the
petite mould of her limbs; and yet there was nothing thin or attenuated
about her, and the epithet "fragile" could not have been applied to her
with half the justice of that very opposite word, "willowy." Her face
was infantile in the smallness of the features, in their perfect round,
and in the expression of helpless placidity which seemed to lie upon it.
But those features were yet classical in outline, and the mouth,
especially, was very sweet and budding. The open eyes were blue as
heaven; and the hair, of which there was a great wealth, loosed from all
restraint and sweeping back on her shoulders, was of that delicate and
almost impalpable blonde so seldom met (even among the English, who
arrogate to themselves the purest blonde hair in the world) and so
universally admired--nay, almost worshipped.

It is not to be supposed that so long a time was necessary for the two
Zouaves to catch the particulars here set down, as would be indicated by
the length of the description itself; and certainly no such length of
time was allowed them without interruption. It was now evident that
neither the dying man nor the young girl had before been aware of the
entrance of the strangers; but as Webster entered with his torch of
pine, the sudden light startled