ir and the waning light.

The wind rose as the twilight deepened, waking at intervals in the
gloomy stillness, as if from sleep. It filled the room every now and
then with a sad, sighing sound, then died out slowly, again to swell,
again to fall, sad as the tolling of a funeral knell. He lay listening
to it when I went to him, with parted lips and strange solemnity of
face. Too heart-broken for speech, I knelt beside him with a stifled
moan. 'Magsie,' (that was his pet name for me,) 'I thought it was your
notion, dear, but there is a voice in the wind to-night, and it is
calling me.' I made an effort to answer him, to speak; to tell him at
the last how precious he had always been to me--how inexpressibly dear;
to win from him some parting word of fond endearment that I might
remember always; but the words died out in hoarse, inarticulate murmurs.
'Yes, a voice _is_ calling to me, and it falls through miles and miles
of air; then the wind takes it up and brings it to me. They want me up
there, and I am going, Magsie; kiss me, dear.' The one arm stole around
my neck; the chilled lips met mine in a lingering farewell pressure. He
went on, feebly: 'I have been wild and wayward, Magsie, in the times
gone by; I have grieved your great love sometimes, by giving you a cross
word or look, not meaning it, dear, never meaning it, but because a
perverse mood seized me. Forgive me, dear; don't remember it against me,
sister!' Words came at last; they burst forth in a low moan of anguish:
'My darling! my darling! you break my heart!' Then my poor boy crept
closer to me, in a last fond effort at endearment, and laid his cold
cheek close against my own. The gloom deepened. The form within my clasp
grew cold, became a lifeless weight. I knew it, but I could not lay it
down. I still chafed the pulseless hand, and kissed it, and still I
pressed the poor, maimed, lifeless form closer and closer to my heart,
till reason fled, and I remember nothing. They unwound the chilled arm
from about my neck; they thought I, too, was dead.... With muffled
drumbeat and martial music, with horrid pomp of war, they buried my
darling as soldiers are buried that die at home; but on the grave over
which was fired the parting volley there fell no kindred's tear: I, the
only mourner, lay _raving_ in my room.

Wintry winds have piled the dreary snow above that grave; spring has
kissed it into bloom and verdure; summer skies have smiled above it; and
the maimed