soldiers will be forthcoming when they are needed, and the most
important element of their military education will have been acquired;
and it is not impossible that the day may come when you yourself will
feel that the power you have thus obtained is worth more to you than all
you learned in college. Are you too old and infirm for such service, or
are you a woman, and have you the means of equipping another who is
unable to do it for himself? If so, it will not be hard to find an
able-bodied young man who will gladly take charge of a rifle, on the
condition that he is to be its owner at the end of six months, if he can
then place ten successive shots in a circle of a foot in diameter at two
hundred yards.

"A word to the wise is enough." The word has been uttered in
trumpet-tones from the battle-fields of the South. Let us prove that we
are wise, by acting at once upon its suggestions.

* * * * *

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PILGRIMAGE.

The morning sun rose clear and lovely on the old red rocks of Sorrento,
and danced in a thousand golden scales and ripples on the wide
Mediterranean. The shadows of the gorge were pierced by long golden
shafts of light, here falling on some moist bed of crimson cyclamen,
there shining through a waving tuft of gladiolus, or making the abundant
yellow fringes of the broom more vivid in their brightness. The
velvet-mossy old bridge, in the far shadows at the bottom, was lit up by
a chance beam, and seemed as if it might be something belonging to
fairy-land.

There had been a bustle and stir betimes in the little dove-cot, for
to-morrow the inmates were to leave it for a long, adventurous journey.

To old Elsie, the journey back to Rome, the city of her former days of
prosperity, the place which had witnessed her ambitious hopes, her
disgrace and downfall, was full of painful ideas. There arose to her
memory, like a picture, those princely halls, with their slippery, cold
mosaic floors, their long galleries of statues and paintings, their
enchanting gardens, musical with the voice of mossy fountains, fragrant
with the breath of roses and jessamines, where the mother of Agnes had
spent the hours of her youth and beauty. She seemed to see her flitting
hither and thither down the stately ilex-avenues, like some gay
singing-bird, to whom were given gilded cages and a constant round of
caresses and sweets, or like the flowers in the