a vacant building where were kept the spare arms,--called the
armory,--there to wait the few remaining hours of his sojourn in these
familiar scenes, served to deepen the gloom with the thought of the
others of the little band, lying out in the woods, who would not receive
even such simple honors of sepulture as the fort could bestow.

But after the next day, when the poor young soldier was buried (the
children wept dreadfully at the sound of the muffled drum, the troops
being touched by their sympathetic tears, and Captain Demere read the
burial service and alluded feelingly to the other dead of the garrison,
to whom they could only do reverence in the heart and keep their memory
green)--after all this the place took on an air of brisk cheerfulness
and the parade ground presented somewhat the appearance of the esplanade
of a watering-place, minus the wealth and show and fashion.

In the evenings after the dress-parade and the boom of the sunset-gun,
the elder women sat about in the doors and porches, and knitted and
gossiped, and the men walked up and down and discussed the stale war
news from Europe--for the triumphs of British arms were then rife in all
the world--or sat upon the grass and played dominoes or cards; the
soldiers near the barracks threw horseshoes for quoits; the children
rollicked about, shrill but joyous; Odalie and Belinda Rush in their
cool fresh linen dresses, arm in arm, the admiration of all beholders,
strolled up and down with measured step and lissome grace; and the flag
would slip down, and the twilight come on, and a star tremble in the
blue summer sky; and the sweet fern that overhung the deep clear spring,
always in the shadow of the oaks near one of the block-houses, would
give out a fresh, pungent fragrance. Presently the moon would shed her
bland benediction over all the scene, and the palisades would draw
sharp-pointed shadows on the dark interior slope, and beside each cannon
the similitude of another great gun would be mounted; a pearly glister
would intimate where the river ran between the dense glossy foliage of
the primeval woods, and only the voice of the chanting cicada, or the
long dull drone of the frogs, or the hooting of an owl, would come from
the deserted village, lying there so still and silent, guarded by the
guns of the fort.

And after a little Odalie would be strolling on her husband's arm in the
moonlight, and would silently gaze about with long, doubting, diplomat