s red with weeping.

She pressed Jennie's hand.

"Little Joe has been killed--"

"Mrs. Davis' beautiful boy--impossible!"

"He climbed over the bannisters and fell to the brick pavement and died
a few minutes after his mother reached his side--"

The girl could make no answer. She had come on a sudden impulse to cheer
the lonely leader of her people. Perhaps his need in this dark hour had
called her. She thought of Socola's story of his mother's vision and
wondered with a sudden pang of self-pity where the man she loved was
to-night.

This beautiful child, named in honor of his favorite brother, was the
greatest joy of the badgered soul of the Confederate leader.

Suddenly his white face appeared at the head of the stairs. A courier
had come from the battlefield with an important dispatch. Grant and Lee
were locked in their death grapple in the Wilderness. He would try even
in this solemn hour to do his whole duty.

He passed the sympathetic group murmuring a sentence whose pathos
brought the tears again to Jennie's eyes.

"Not my will, O Lord, but thine--thine--thine!"

He took the dispatch from the courier's hand and held it open for some
time, staring at it with fixed gaze.

He searched the courier's face and asked pathetically:

"Will you tell me, my friend, what is in it--I--I--cannot read--"

The courier read the message in low tones. A great battle was joined.
The fate of a nation hung on its issue. The stricken man drew from his
pocket a tiny gold pencil and tried to write an answer--stopped suddenly
and pressed his hand on his heart.

Billy sprang to his side and seized the dispatch:

"I'll take the message to General Cooper--Mr. President--"

The white face turned to the young soldier and looked at him pitifully:

"Thank you, my son--thank you--it is best--I must have this hour with
our little boy--leave me with my dead!"

Jennie stayed to help the stricken home.

She took little Jeff in her arms to rock him to sleep. He drew her head
down and whispered:

"Miss Jennie, I got to Joe first after he fell. I knelt down beside him
and said all the prayers I know--but God wouldn't wake him!"

The girl drew the child close and kissed the reddened eyes. Over her
head beat the steady tramp of the father's feet, back and forth, back
and forth, a wounded lion in his cage. The windows and doors were still
wide open, the curtains waving wan and ghost-like from their hangings.

Two days later she