blackened
with smoke, their hands stained with blood, fierce frowns upon their
brows, and curses on their lips. The parsonage presented little
attraction in its external aspect to men whose object was plunder, and
they turned first to larger and more showy buildings. These were soon
rifled; the noise of their ribald songs, their blasphemous oaths and
drunken revelry penetrating often the chamber of death, yet scarcely
awakening an emotion in the presence of the great Destroyer. At length
the little gate is flung rudely open, and unsteady but heavy steps
ascend from the court-yard to the house. They cross the piazza, they
enter the parlor where life's gentlest courtesies and holiest affections
have hitherto dwelt, the door of the room beyond is thrown open, and two
men stand upon its threshold, sobered for an instant by the scene before
them. There, pale, emaciated, the dim eyes closed, and the face wearing
that unearthly beauty which seems the token of an adieu too fond, too
tender, too sacred for human language, from the parting spirit to its
loved ones, the wife and mother, speechless, senseless, yet not quite
lifeless, lay propped by pillows. At her side knelt Mr. Sinclair; the
pallor of deep, overpowering emotion was on his cheek, yet in his lifted
eyes there was an expression of holy faith, and you might almost have
fancied that a smile lay upon the lips which were breathing forth the
hallowed strains of prayer--"Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech
Thee, from the hands of our enemies, that we, being armed with thy
defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify Thee, who
art the only giver of all victory, through the merits of thy Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord--Amen."

Dark, sinful men as they were, fresh from brutal crime, those strains
touched a long silent chord in their hearts--a chord linked with the
memory of a smiling village in their own distant land--with a mother's
love and the innocence of childhood. Faint--faint, alas! were those
memories, and Mr. Sinclair's "amen" had scarcely issued from his lips,
when the eyes of the leader rested on the beautiful face of Mary
Sinclair, as, pressed to the side of her father, she stretched her arms
out over her dying mother, and turned her eyes imploringly on their
dreaded visitors. The ruffians sprang forward with words whose meaning
was happily lost to the failing sense of the terror-stricken girl. Mr.
Sinclair started to his feet, and with one arm s