scribably
impressive:--inspiring, yet solemn.

They stood watching and listening till the pageant had vanished, and
then turned back into their room, Francesca taking up the refrain and
singing the line,

"As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on."

Surrey's face brightened at the rapt expression of hers. "Sing it again,
dearie!" he said. She sang it again. "Do you mean it?" he asked then.
"Can you sing it, and mean it with all your heart, for me?"

She looked at him with an expression of anxiety and pain. "What are you
asking, Willie?"

He sat down; taking her upon his knee, and with the old fond gesture,
holding her head to his heart,--"I should have told you before, dearie,
but I did not wish to throw any shadow on the happy days we have been
spending together; they were few and brief enough without marring them;
and I was certain of the effect it would have upon you, by your
incessant anxiety for Robert."

She drew a long, gasping sigh, and started away from his hold: "O
Willie, you are not going to--"

His arm drew her back to her resting-place. "I do not return to my
command, darling. I am to raise a black brigade."

"Freedmen?"

"Yes, dearie."

"O Willie,--and that act just passed!"

"It is true; yet, after all, it is but one risk more."

"One? O Willie, it is a thousand. You had that many chances of escape
where you were; you might be wounded and captured a score of times, and
come home safe at last; but this!"

"I know."

"To go into every battle with the sentence of death hanging over you; to
know that if you are anywhere captured, anyhow made prisoner, you are
condemned to die,--O Willie, I can't bear it; I can't bear it! I shall
die, or go mad, to carry such a thought all the time."

For answer he only held her close, with his face resting upon her hair,
and in the stillness they could hear each other's heart beat.

"It is God's service," he said, at last.

"I know."

"It will end slavery and the war more effectually than aught else."

"I know."

"It will make these freedmen, wherever they fight, free men. It will
give them and their people a sense of dignity and power that might
otherwise take generations to secure."

"I know."

"And I. Both feeling and knowing this, who so fit to yield and to do for
such a cause? If those who see do not advance, the blind will never
walk."

Silence for a space again fell between them. Francesca