e face.

"I trust, dear friends," he said, in a tremulous voice, "that all is
well with our brother and commander. His last words were, 'God is with
us.'"

"Oh! but, man, _that_ isn't well," broke out Gahogan, in a groan.
"What did ye pray for his sowl for? Why didn't ye pray for his loife?"

Fitz Hugh turned his horse and rode silently away. The next day he was
seen journeying rearward by the side of an ambulance, within which lay
what seemed a strangely delicate boy, insensible, and, one would say,
mortally ill.

SPLIT ZEPHYR.

AN ATTENUATED YARN SPUN BY THE FATES.

BY HENRY A. BEERS

_Century Magazine, June, 1883._

It was the evening of Commencement Day. The old church on the green,
which had rung for many consecutive hours with the eloquence of slim
young gentlemen in evening dress, exhorting the Scholar in Politics or
denouncing the Gross Materialism of the Age, was at last empty and
still. As it drew the dewy shadows softly about its eaves and filled
its rasped interior with soothing darkness, it bore a whimsical
likeness to some aged horse which, having been pestered all day with
flies, was now feeding in peace along the dim pasture.

It was Clay who suggested this resemblance, and we all laughed
appreciatively, as we used to do in those days at Clay's clever
sayings. There were five of us strolling down the diagonal walk to
our farewell supper at "Ambrose's." Arrived at that refectory, we
found it bare of guests and had things quite to ourselves. After
supper, we took our coffee out in the little court-yard, where a
fountain dribbled, and the flutter of the grape-leaves on the
trellises in the night wind invited to confidences.

"Well, Armstrong," began Doddridge, "where are you going to spend the
vacation?"

"Vacation!" answered Armstrong; "vacations are over for me."

"You're not going to work for your living at once?" inquired Berkeley.

"I'm going to work to-morrow," replied Armstrong, emphatically: "I'm
going down to New York to enter a law office."

"I thought you had some notion of staying here and taking a course of
graduate study."

"No, sir! The sooner a man gets into harness, the better. I've wasted
enough time in the last four years. The longer a man loafs around in
this old place, under pretense of reading and that kind of thing, the
harder it is for him to take hold."

Armstrong was a rosy little man, with yellow hair and light eyes. His
expression was one of irresolu