"Celia! Celia!" called the boy, running up the veranda steps. "_He_ is
here! Please hurry, because he's going to have a battle!"

She came slowly, pale and lovely in her black gown, and held out her
hand.

"There is a battle going on all around us, isn't there?" she asked.
"That is what all this dreadful uproar means?"

"Yes," he said; "there is trouble on the other side of those hills."

"Do you think there will be fighting here?"

"I don't know," he said.

She motioned him to a veranda chair, then seated herself. "What shall we
do?" she asked calmly. "I am not alarmed--but my grandfather is
bedridden, and my brother is a child. Is it safe to stay?"

The bandmaster looked at her helplessly.

"I don't know," he repeated--"I don't know what to say. Nobody seems to
understand what is happening; we in the regiment are never told
anything; we know nothing except what passes under our eyes." He broke
off suddenly; the situation, her loneliness, the impending danger,
appalled him.

"May I ask a little favor?" she said, rising. "Would you mind coming in
a moment to see my grandfather?"

He stood up obediently, sheathed sabre in his left hand; she led the way
across the hall and up the stairs, opened the door, and motioned toward
the bed. At first he saw nothing save the pillows and snowy spread.

"Will you speak to him?" she whispered.

He approached the bed, cap in hand.

"He is very old," she said; "he was a soldier of Washington. He desires
to see a soldier of the Union."

And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of the bed, a palsied,
bloodless phantom of the past--an inert, bedridden, bony thing that
looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him.

"This is a Union soldier, grandfather," she said, kneeling on the floor
beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: "Would you
mind taking his hand? He cannot move."

The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man's hand in
his.

The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade.

"That is all," said the girl simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed
it, and laid it on the bedspread. "A soldier of Washington," she said
dreamily. "I am glad he has seen you--I think he understands: but he is
very, very old."

She lingered a moment to touch the white hair with her hand; the
bandmaster stepped back to let her pass, then put on his cap, hooked his
sabre, turned squarely toward the bed and saluted.

The phan