nced it, once more, and
slowly, timidly, gently, lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips upon
it as upon a shrine. "For me and mine!" he whispered,--"for me and
mine!" tears dimming the pathetic, dying eyes.

The peaceful quiet was broken by a tempest of awful sound,--groans and
shrieks and yells mingled in horrible discord, blended with the
trampling of many feet,--noises which seemed to their startled and
excited fancies like those of hell itself. The next moment a door was
flung open; and Mrs. Franklin, bruised, lame, her garments torn, blood
flowing from a cut on her head, staggered into the room. "O Lord! O Lord
Jesus!" she cried, "the day of wrath has come!" and fell, shuddering and
crying, on the floor.

CHAPTER XVIII

"_Will the future come? It seems that we may almost ask
this question, when we see such terrible shadow._"

VICTOR HUGO

Here it will be necessary to consider some facts which, while they are
rather in the domain of the grave recorder of historical events, than in
that of the narrator of personal experiences, are yet essential to the
comprehension of the scenes in which Surrey and Francesca took such
tragic parts.

Following the proclamation for a draft in the city of New York, there
had been heard on all sides from the newspaper press which sympathized
with and aided the rebellion, premonitions of the coming storm;
denunciations of the war, the government, the soldiers, of the harmless
and inoffensive negroes; angry incitings of the poor man to hatred
against the rich, since the rich man could save himself from the
necessity of serving in the ranks by the payment of three hundred
dollars of commutation money; incendiary appeals to the worst passions
of the most ignorant portion of the community; and open calls to
insurrection and arms to resist the peaceable enforcement of a law
enacted in furtherance of the defence of the nation's life.

Doubtless this outbreak had been intended at the time of the darkest and
most disastrous days of the Republic; when the often-defeated and sorely
dispirited Army of the Potomac was marching northward to cover
Washington and Baltimore, and the victorious legions of traitors under
Lee were swelling across the border, into a loyal State; when Grant
stood in seemingly hopeless waiting before Vicksburg, and Banks before
Port Hudson; and the whole people of the North, depressed and
disheartened by the continued series of defeats to our arms, we