fellows of mine, when one of the nurses asked me for directions
as to the burial of some men who had just been brought in. They had
officers' uniforms on, and it was ascertained that they were really
dead. As I turned to give the necessary directions, a man at my side,
who was smoothing down the limbs of one who had just ceased to breathe,
handed me a photograph from the man's breast, all rumpled and bloody. I
recognized it in a moment as yours, Percy,--though how it should have
been in that man's breast, I couldn't see."

Percy and I looked at each other. But we dared not think. He went on.

"I could not recognize him. But he was one of so many who were brought
in on that terrible day after the battle, and except my own company I
scarcely knew any of the officers. But I saw by the photograph where you
were, at least the name on the back was a guide. It was Barton, Mass.,
and the date of April, 1861. So, as I had worked pretty well at
Antietam, Little Mac gave me a week's furlough, and I thought I would
try it!"

"Do you remember at all how he looked?" Mrs. Lunt asked, for I could not
speak.

"The young officer? Yes, Madam, I looked keenly at him, you may be sure.
He was tall and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, and his regular
features were smiling and peaceful. They mostly look so who are shot
dead at once. And this one had not suffered. He had died at the moment
of triumph."

I went home to fear and to weep. It seemed too certain. And time brought
us the truth. Robert had fallen as he would have chosen to fall, leading
on his men. He was so tall, and he was such a shining mark for death!
But I knew that no din of cannon or roar of battle was loud enough to
overcome the still, small voices of home, and that his last thought was,
as he wrote me it would be, "of you all."

O beautiful, valiant youth! O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way
through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new
nation must be born!

IN THE HEMLOCKS.

Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds
that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the
number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little
suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding
upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and
South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their
reunions in the branches over our heads,