ery man that's killed isn't dead--if what the Bible says is true."

"O my son," said Mrs. Manly, regarding him with affectionate earnestness,
"do you know what you say? have you considered it well?"

"Yes," said Frank, "I've thought it all over. It hasn't been out of my
thoughts, day or night, this ever so long; though I was determined not to
open my lips about it to any one, till my mind was made up. I know five
or six that have enlisted, and I'm just as well able to serve my country
as any of them. I believe I can go through all the hardships any of them
can. And though Helen laughs at me now for a coward, before I've been in
a fight, she won't laugh at me afterwards." But here the lad's voice
broke, and he dashed a tear from his eye.

"No, no, Frank," said Helen, remorsefully, thinking suddenly of those
whose brothers have gone forth bravely to battle, and never come home
again. And she saw in imagination her own dear, brave, loving brother
carried bleeding from the field, his bright, handsome face deathly pale,
the eyes that now beamed so hopefully and tenderly, closing--perhaps
forever. "Forgive my jokes, Frank; but you are too young to go to war. We
have lost one brother by secession, and we can't afford to lose another."

She alluded to George, the oldest of the children, who had been several
years in the Carolinas; who had married a wife there, and become a
slave-owner; and who, when the war broke out, forgot his native north,
and the free institutions under which he had been bred, to side with the
south and slavery. This had proved a source of deep grief to his parents;
not because the pecuniary support they had derived from him, up to the
fall of Fort Sumter, was now cut off, greatly to their distress,--for
they were poor,--but because, when he saw the Union flag fall at
Charleston, he had written home that it was a glorious sight; and they
knew that the love of his wife, and the love of his property, had made
him a traitor to his country.

"If I've a brother enlisted on the wrong side," said Frank, "so much the
more reason that I should enlist on the right side. And I am not so young
but that I can be doing something for my country, and something for you
here at home, at the same time. If I volunteer, you will be allowed state
aid, and I mean to send home all my pay, to the last dollar. I wish you
would tell me, father, that I can have your consent."

Mr. Manly sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed