" said my uncle, in a half-whisper.

"Dear!" said my mother, innocently, "that's how the sheets came by that
bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan."

"I am quite shocked!" faltered my uncle.

"You well may be," said my father. "A woman who has been heretofore
above all suspicion! But come," he said, seeing that my uncle looked
sad, and was no doubt casting up the probable price of twice six
yards of holland, "but come, you were always a famous rhapsodist or
tale-teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some story of
your own,--something which your experience has left strong in your
impressions."

"Let us first have the candles," said my mother.

The candles were brought, the curtains let down; we all drew our chairs
to the hearth. But in the interval my uncle had sunk into a gloomy
revery; and when we called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off
with effort some recollections of pain.

"You ask me," he said, "to tell you some tale which my own experience
has left deeply marked in my impressions,--I will tell you one, apart
from my own life, but which has often haunted me. It is sad and strange,
ma'am."

"Ma'am, brother?" said my mother, reproachfully, letting her small hand
drop upon that which, large and sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her
as he spoke.

"Austin, you have married an angel!" said my uncle; and he was,
I believe, the only brother-in-law who ever made so hazardous an
assertion.

CHAPTER VII. MY UNCLE ROLAND'S TALE.

"It was in Spain--no matter where or how--that it was my fortune to
take prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held,--a
lieutenant; and there was so much similarity in our sentiments that we
became intimate friends,--the most intimate friend I ever had, sister,
out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not
well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he
had had his deserts. Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid him
for the loss of all else.

"We were both at that time volunteers in a foreign service,--in that
worst of service, civil war,--he on one side, I the other, both,
perhaps, disappointed in the cause we had severally espoused. There was
something similar, too, in our domestic relationships. He had a son--a
boy--who was all in life to him, next to his country and his duty. I
too had then such a son, though of fewer years." (The Captain paused
an instant; we exchang