s were
added, and a wide veranda replaced the rickety little porch and gave
upon a noble prospect of mountain and valley and river. Here on sunshiny
noons in the good Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad loved to sit,
blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable December days.
Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give Valeria a meaning
glance and mutter "Oh, leetle _Owel_! Oh, leetle _Owel_!" and then break
into laughter that must needs pause to let him wipe his eyes.

"Yes, Vallie 'pears ter hev right good sense an' makes out toler'ble
well, considerin'," her husband would affably remark, "though of course
it war _me_ ez interduced her ter the managers, an' she gits her main
chance in the show through my bein' a celebrated ventriloquisk."

THE LOST GUIDON

Night came early. It might well seem that day had fled affrighted. The
heavy masses of clouds, glooming low, which had gathered thicker and
thicker, as if crowding to witness the catastrophe, had finally shaken
asunder in the concussions of the air at the discharges of artillery,
and now the direful rain, always sequence of the shock of battle, was
steadily falling, falling, on the stricken field. Many a soldier who
might have survived his wounds would succumb to exposure to the elements
during the night, debarred the tardy succor that must needs await his
turn. One of the surgeons at their hasty work at the field hospital,
under the shelter of the cliffs on the slope, paused to note the presage
of doom and death, and to draw a long breath before he adjusted himself
anew to the grim duties of the scalpel in his hand. His face was set and
haggard, less with a realization of the significance of the scene--for
he was used to its recurrence--than simply with a physical reflection of
horror, as if it were glassed in a mirror. A phenomenon that had earlier
caught his attention in the landscape appealed again to his notice,
perhaps because the symptom was not in his line.

"Looks like a case of dementia," he observed to the senior surgeon,
standing near at hand.

The superior officer adjusted his field-glass. "Looks like 'Death on the
White Horse'!" he responded.

Down the highway, at a slow pace, rode a cavalryman wearing a gray
uniform, with a sergeant's chevrons, and mounted on a steed good in his
day, but whose day was gone. A great clot of blood had gathered on his
broad white chest, where a bayonet had thrust him deep. Despite his