ree years ago."

"A long three years. Sometimes when I look toward the North, where
Washington lies, I begin to wonder about Lincoln. I hear bad things
spoken of him here, and then there are others who say he is not bad."

"The 'others' are right, I think."

"I am glad to hear you say so. I feel sorry for him, such a lonely man
and so unhappy, they say. I wish I knew all the wrong and right of this
cruel struggle."

"It would take the wisdom of the angels for that."

They walked on a little farther in silence, passing now near the
Capitol and its surrounding group of structures.

"What are they doing these days up there on Shockoe?" asked Prescott.

"Congress is in session and meets again in the morning, but I imagine it
can do little. Our fate rests with the armies and the President."

A deep mellow note sounded from the hill and swelled far over the city.
In the dead silence of the night it penetrated like a cannon shot, and
the echo seemed to Prescott to come back from the far forest and the
hills beyond the James. It was quickly followed by another and then
others until all Richmond was filled with the sound.

Prescott felt the hand upon his arm clasp him in nervous alarm.

"What does that noise mean?" he cried.

"It's the Bell Tower!" she cried, pointing to a dark spire-like
structure on Shockoe Hill in the Capitol Square.

"The Bell Tower!"

"Yes; the alarm! The bell was to be rung there when the Yankees came!
Don't you hear it? They have come! They have come!"

The tramp of swift feet increased and grew nearer, there was a hum, a
murmur and then a tumult in the streets; shouts of men, the orders of
officers and galloping hoof-beats mingled; metal clanked against metal;
cannon rumbled and their heavy iron wheels dashed sparks of fire from
the stones as they rushed onward. There was a noise of shutters thrown
back and lights appeared at innumerable windows. High feminine voices
shouted to each other unanswered questions. The tumult swelled to a
roar, and over it all thundered the great bell, its echo coming back in
regular vibrations from the hills and the farther shore of the river.

After the first alarm Helen was quiet and self-contained. She had lived
three years amid war and its tumults, and what she saw now was no more
than she had trained herself to expect.

Prescott drew her farther back upon the sidewalk, out of the way of the
cannon and the galloping cavalry, and he, too, waited quietly