ad--her _mother_. "My grandfather and myself lived in the house,
here. We had black servants, but they have all gone away. We did not
have any negro quarter--the servants lived in one part of the house. My
grandfather has been very ill--so ill that I thought he would die. He is
very fond of the Union--_I_ do not know anything about politics. He was
better a little; but the house took fire awhile ago, and I could
scarcely help him out. I got out the straw mattress and a sheet, and I
could get out nothing more. I am afraid my poor grandfather is very ill,
now; perhaps he is dying. I thought he was dying a little while ago, and
I screamed--I could not help it. That is all, grandfather, is it not?
oh, grandfather! grandfather!" and the poor girl, for the first time
broken down, fell forward on the straw pallet, buried her face near the
old man's head, and sobbed like an overtasked child.

"Poor girl!" said John Crawford. He did not mean to speak aloud, but he
did so, and the dying man heard him.

"Young man," he said, "you took an oath just now. Will you take another,
to make an old man die happier?"

"I will!" answered the young man, bending close to him. He was too much
exhausted, now, to raise his head any more.

"You say that the Union troops have won the fight to-day?"

"I do say so. We have repulsed the rebel attacks every time; and the
last repulse was a rout. They are defeated."

"You believe that you can reach the Union camp in safety?"

"I have no doubt of it," answered the Zouave.

"Then swear to me, with the same uplifted hand you used awhile ago, that
you will remove my granddaughter, Marion Hobart, to the North--out of
this den of secession. She has money in a Bank in New York, enough to
make her comfortable--I put it there three years ago, thinking such a
time as this might come. Swear to me that you will find her a home with
some honest family, and that you will neither do harm to her yourself
nor permit it to approach her if you can shelter her from it. Swear it
by the Ever-Living God."

"I swear!" said the young soldier, lifting his hand solemnly.

The old man lay still on his pillow, a strange and awful shadow stealing
over his face. His granddaughter had raised her head, and she saw it,
though the torch had burned low and there was little but the red light
of the fire glimmering into the building. She buried her face once more
in the pallet, threw her arms around the old man's form, and sobbed,