over red battle fields. Its unswerving hurry, its terrible, calm
excitement, brought before his vision long blue lines--the fixed faces
sterner than death, with steady eyes and quickened breath--the nervous
clutch of muskets, as the rattle of small arms and boom of cannon came
nearer and nearer, the fluttering silken banners, the calm sunshine, and
sweet May breath--and the quick, questioning note of a meadow lark
dropped down through the silence of the advancing column. As the
maddening music stormed and beat about him, his heart throbbed audibly,
and the rushing currents of his fiery Southern blood sounded in his
ears. Honor, prudence, resolution, everything was swept away in the lava
tide of excitement. Before him he saw the crown of his life. All heaven
and all earth should not stop him short of it. He rose and began
crossing the room, with heavy, resolute tread. In the dimness, the
player was hardly visible; he would assure himself of her mortality at
least. A sudden, fierce hunger for sight and touch thrilled him.

Midway he stopped. The music dropped with a shock from its fiery
enthusiasm. Was it only an echo, or an army of ghosts crossing a dim
field, long since fought over--the steady tramp, tramp, the pendulum of
time? Unutterably wailing, pitiful, it sent plaintive, piercing cries up
to the calm, dead heavens. All the fearful sights he had seen rose
before him. Upturned lay faces calm in death as in a child's sleep, with
all camp roughnesses swept away in that still whiteness; strong men's,
with that terrible scowl of battle or the distortion of agonized death
on them--mangled and crushed forms--all the wreck of a fought battle,
terrible in its suggestive pathos. It sank away into the minor of water
voices, soft, monotonous, agonizing in its utter passivity, a brilliant
arpeggio flashed up the keys like a shower of gold, and Miss Berkeley
rose with white face and trembling breath, and Nelly was alone in the
room, sobbing nervously in her armchair.

The storm passed that night, with great swayings of trees, and dash of
broad raindrops, and piled up broken masses of fleecy white clouds,
tossed about by the rough, exultant September wind. Bright days
followed, mellowing with each one to sunnier, calmer perfection. Moore
passed them in his own room. That night had torn away all the disguises
that he had put upon his heart. He knew now that he loved this
woman--knew it with such a bitter sense of humiliation as s