uriate charge of the enemy upon
our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until
further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad,
murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in
springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had
entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping
fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for
this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field
on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged
a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no
parallel in American history.

On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's
best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime
devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the
extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had
not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most
precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern
treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved.
The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current,
whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his
fortifications at Corinth.

AENONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER XIII.

With Sergius there was seldom any interval between impulse and action.
Now, without giving time for explanation, he made one bound to where
Cleotos stood; and, before the startled Greek had time to drop the
slender fingers which he had raised to his lips, the stroke of the
infuriated master's hand descended upon his head, and he fell senseless
at AEnone's feet, with one arm resting upon the lounge behind her.

'Is my honor of so little worth that a common slave should be allowed to
rob me of it?' Sergius exclaimed, turning to AEnone in such a storm of
passion that, for the moment, it seemed as though the next blow would
descend upon her.

Strangely enough, though she had ever been used to tremble at his
slightest frown, and though now, in his anger, there might even be
actual danger to her life, she felt, for the moment, no fear. Her
sympathy for the bleeding victim at her feet, of whose sad plight she
had been the innocent cause, and whose perils had probably as yet only
commenced--her consciousness that a crisis in h