the draft, and came up to my little sitting-room; the very His company was to go directly into camp to be drilled, and room-oh, my heart!-where we had studied, and read poetry, for the next two days everything was bustle and confusion, and and talked so many, many happy hours, and now all gone-I kept myself very carefully out of Jamie's way, so that he only gone forever! I was saying something like that to myself, even had one little hurried moment alone with me at the very last. as I stood looking dumbly into his face, and noticing the light Then he asked me to promise to be his wife when he came and color glowing there, even though the eyes gazing so lov- home, and talked so splendidly, that even my heart of ice ingly into mine were a little hazy, and more than a little sorry. thrilled, and my bitter, bitter blood tingled at hearing him, Then, catching both my hands in his, and holding them tight, but I never let him guess it; and he was called and went, and he said: I never even returned the kiss he gave me; never raised my eyes, or varied from the words I had said over, and over, and over again :

"Annie, I must go; I must go, darling!"

"You are drafted!" gasped I; and he answered, softly:
"No, dear; thank God, I go of my own free will."
"You are not obliged to go?"

"No, Annie; I go because I cannot stay."

"Go voluntarily, and leave me, when you might stay!" exclaimed I, turning away with a feeling like death at my heart; but he put his arms around me, and drew me close to his breast, while he whispered:

"Oh, my darling! my darling, will not you send me out with your love and your promise to shield me? send me out your own true knight to fight for the right and for you? Oh, Annie, do not hold me back when all my soul cries 'Go!'"' "You do not love me if any voice is stronger than mine," said I, sullenly and basely.

"Darling, remember how you admired the old heroic lines we read so lately

'I had not loved thee, dear, so well,
Loved I not honor more.'

Will you not make them our own to-day?"
But I was still sullen and base, and for all the splendid heroic
pleading he wasted upon me, I gave nothing but tears and
pouting, and at last gloomy silence; but, thank God, he never
wavered a moment, and even in all my sullen anger, I was so
afraid that I should conquer and he would yield, and then I
would have despised him, and hated myself forever; but he
never wavered, and again thank God that he did not.

Presently home came father with more news. Poor old Peter Parley was drafted, and the very next week he would have been too old; and, of course, he would not go, but would pay for a substitute; and then father turned to Jamie, saying:

Stay at home, and I will be your wife when you please." "Heaven forgive you, Annie, as I do. Remember, child, I forgive you, and love you, and shall live and, if God wills, die loving you first and dearest of all, and I go to prove my love." And then he was gone, and I was alone. They staid in camp at Readville three weeks, and then were marched South to the aid of that doomed band of heroes so hopelessly, as it seemed, investing Richmond: I knew when he was coming to bid us a last good-by, and I wrote:

"If you can even now stay at home, or if you will even make the effort, or express the desire to do so, I will forgive and welcome you; otherwise I shall be away from Willowvale when you arrive."

The answer came promptly enough, and it was :

"I will not purchase even your love, Annie, at the price of dishonor. I shall come to Willowvale to-morrow, and I implore you, Annie-nay, more, I charge you, upon your honor as a free-born American woman-to see me, and hear once more Hear me, Annie, what I have to plead in defense of my cause. only hear me, and this mood of yours must melt before the holy light of truth and justice."

Will anybody believe it of me, for I can hardly now believe it of myself, but I went away, and worse-I went to spend the day with a cousin of Peter Parley's, and allowed him to drive me over to Jackson, the town where she lived. Oh, if my mother had been alive, she would have saved me from making shipwreck thus of all my life; but poor, dear father, how could he tell? And when I came home the next morning, hard, reck

"If you you will go, Ballard, you had better go as Good-less, and defiant, he only said, carelessly: rich's substitute, and take his three hundred dollars; some one will have it, and why not you?"

"Thank you, doctor, but I think not," said Jamie, with a proud sort of smile. "I am going to offer myself as William Holden's substitute; his sick wife and little children could hardly do without his day-wages, and Mr. Goodrich will find plenty of substitutes."

"Mr. Goodrich is not so anxious to leave his friends as you, Mr. Ballard," muttered I, as father turned away to meet Peter Parley, who was hurrying up to the door.

That look of pain and pleading upon my darling's face, as he turned it silently toward me! How it has haunted me through all these years! how it will haunt me until I die! but it never touched me then, for my heart seemed turned to ice, and my blood to bitterness, and I pulled my hand away and went out to the veranda to meet my father and Peter Parley, who took the first chance to whisper in my ear:

"I could not leave you, Annie, if I had to buy twenty substitutes."

Any one would suppose that would have been the very thing to please me in the mood I was in, but it did not; in fact, I felt angrier at him than I did at Jamie, and all the reply I made

was:

"Buying substitutes is a very safe sort of patriotism, Mr. Goodrich, and I believe more in the devotion that leads to noble deeds than in that which lingers at home when all the country is up in arms."

Poor old Peter! how scared he looked! and how bitterly I laughed as I turned away and went to shut myself up in my own room! and how spitefully I collected all Jamie's books and pictures, and even pencils, and rubber, and pen, and went and carried them to his chamber-door, and left them on the threshold.

"Ballard was here yesterday, Annie, and left a note for you. He does not expect to get out here again before they march." The note was this:

"I am deeply grieved and disappointed, Annie, but I am right, and you will see it some day. If I live to come home, I will yet say the words you have gone away to-day to avoid hearing; and, darling, if I die, I shall die as I have lived,

"Your sincere and fervent lover, JAMES BALLARD,” And still my heart was ice, and my blood was bitterness, and I crumpled the little note in my hand, and flung it from me; and then, with a cry of pain, I threw myself upon it, and took it up and smoothed it tenderly-oh, so tenderly and kissed it, and cried over it, and folded it away with my most precious possessions, but that was all. I never answered it, or looked at it again, or allowed myself to remember him tenderly or softly, or in any way but as a man who had turned from my open arms and proffered love, and placed me second to-well, no matter to what he had placed me and my love second, and I would place him last of all-lower than the lowest of those for whom I cared or felt; yes, lower, even, than Peter Parley himself, with his false teeth, and his brindled hair, and his stupid, silly smiles and speeches.

Oh, it is so dreadful to think of those times, and to know that I could have been that wicked, wicked girl I am describing; but it is all true, every bit, and if I was not ashamed to do it, I should not be ashamed to tell it, yes, even to the end; even to the miserable, disgraceful day when my father told me that Mr. Goodrich had formally made his proposals, and wished to marry me at once, and take me abroad, for I have forgotten to say that my health had failed under all this, and they thought I would die if no change could be effected, as my darling mother had died not much older than I was then.

When I heard this, and knew that the crisis had come, all my wicked pride gave way, and that ice-cold heart of mine gave one savage leap of returning life, and I cried out: “Oh, father, father! I cannot marry him, or any manexcept "

Except James Ballard, who cares nothing for you, and has gone away without an effort at gaining my consent to an engagement! Shame on you, Annie, to be pining for a man who has forgotten you."

Would any one suppose that the women Jamie had honored with his love could have been moved by such poor, false words as these? for, although my dear father said them, and believed them, and felt himself right in using them, they were poor and false, and I knew it then as well as now, but I would not confess it; I would not let myself be, and say, and do what I knew I should do, and wanted to do, what my wakening heart cried out to do; no, I smothered it down, crushed it back into its icy tomb, and shut the door, and then I said:

I heard my dry lips murmur hoarsely, "Jamie," but the rest faltered into silence.

"Our friend has died as brave men love to dic-in the front of battle."

And then came a rushing as of many waters in my ears, and the bitterness of death in my heart, and I slipped heavily from my father's arms to the floor, and all was darkness and silence. After that came many weeks when they thought that I must

"Tell Mr. Goodrich, if you please, father, that I accept him die, and I hoped only that it might be so, but God ordered and all his plans."

After that I was ill for a long time, and I do not remember much, except the tender care and attention of everybody, and, most of all, the devotion of that kind and good man whom I had so basely promised to marry.

At last I was well enough to be taken out for little drives, and it was during one of these that I wished to speak and tell him all, but he silenced me.

"I know it all, my poor, dear child," said he; "and I have only been waiting until you should be well enough to tell you that I, your second father now, Annie, will not allow you to ruin your own life and that of a fine fellow like James Ballard, for a foolish lovers' quarrel. I am going to Washington next week, and I shall go from there to the front and see him myself, and " "Oh, no, no, not for worlds!"' cried I. "What! offer me again to a man who preferred death to me, when I offered myself!"

Tut, tut, child!" laughed Peter Parley. "You are not so really well and clear-headed now as you were a few weeks back, when you cried out in your delirium, 'I was proud, and selfish, and perverse, Jamie, but I loved you all the time; yes, and I love you now.'"'

"Did I say that?" whispered I, behind my vail.

"Yes, Annie, and you meant it; and you may trust me, dear girl, to set matters right without wounding your dignity or your delicacy in the smallest particular, for they are as precious to me, Annie, as if you were indeed my own daughter; and from this moment, dear, forget that I ever foolishly dreamed that you could become anything else to me. It was an old man's folly, Annie, but, believe me, it was intended for your happiness as well as mine.”

"I do believe you, sir; I do most truly; and it is I who need forgiveness and forgetfulness, for I have behaved even more badly to you than to him; and I am a wicked, wicked girl, and I wish I was dead."

And then, of course, I cried, and got sick, and poor Peter was at his wit's end, and took me home; and himself and Susan scolded me, and I was sent to bed, and had to drink sige tea, and have the room darkened; but in a day or two I was as well as before; and when Peter Parley set out for Washington, I came down to bid him good-by, and let him kiss my cheek, which we both considered a great privilege.

otherwise. I slowly came back to the world, and to a certain measure of health and strength, and at last was well enough to hear the rest of the sad tidings awaiting me.

After writing his letter, itself a model of gentle pity and chivalrous eulogium of his rival, Mr. Goodrich had started from Washington for New York, and fifty miles from the latter city the train had fallen into the trap set for it by some fiend in human shape, and plunged off a high embankment into the river below. Among the poor mangled bodies displayed for recognition, my father had identified that of the good and unselfish man who had gone to his death for me, as surely as though he had enlisted at Jamie's side, for pocr, wicked, worthless me-and what had I ever done for him, or for either of them, or for any one but my wretched self?

This was the question always in my mind in those days: What have I have done for any human creature, when so much has been done for me? And when at last I was told that my dear friend had left all his great fortune to me, making his will the very day before he started for Washington, and calling me his "beloved young friend and adopted daughter," I thought that I saw the answer of Providence to the dreary cry of my widowed heart; and I humbly hope that, with that fortune, I have made some poor homes the brighter, and some sad lives the happier, and helped to heal some wounds akin to mine own.

I never could find Jamie's grave, or gain information of where his dear remains probably lay, for the enemy had possessed themselves at once of the field when he fell, and our forces did not regain it; but in a corner of my father's lot in the cemetery I placed a simple stone to his memory, and had cut upon it, beneath the name and dates:

"Faithful unto Death."

For I knew, I always knew as well I do now, that he was faithful, not alone to God and his country, and his honor, but to even me, poor, wicked, worthless me, who had sent him to his death without one kind word or loving promise.

You will well believe that when Decoration Day came round, my Soldier's grave was heaped with all the sweetest and rarest blossoms my gardens afforded; and for his sake I stripped gardens and greenhouse of all that remained, and went myself with the others to place them upon his brother-soldiers' graves; but I am afraid it was the old jealousy and selfishness again-I would not let the others decorate Jamie's grave, but did it all

back at night to remove those wreaths that others had looked upon, and replace them with fresher and rarer ones, all my own and his.

A week went by-such a long, long week, with at least six-myself, heaping it with flowers in the morning, and stealing teen hours of weary waiting in each of its seven days, and then came a letter directed to father in Peter Parley's handwriting. I brought it home, and waited with it in my hand three mortal hours longer before I heard Hector's hoof-beats upon the bridge, and Pluto's breathless bark, as he tore up the avenue; and still I had to wait until my father had given his orders to Teddy, and had taken off his hat, and coat, and gloves, and pulled out his spectacles, and settled himself in his own chair, with one leg crossed over the other. Oh, how they grind down upon the bare and quivering nerves of our woman-hearts, these moments of waiting, at the very crisis of our lives, while these dear methodical people, who have no more idea of what is passing

One Decoration Day followed another, and still I bore my sad life, and tried to brighten the lives of others, be it never so slightly, until this very year of 1872, and this very last Decoration Day, when, just after sunset, I went creeping back to the cemetery, deserted now of all the living, my flowers in my hands, and the bitter tears dropping down my faded cheeks, for on that night, of all the nights in my life, my burden seemed the heaviest, and my heart the saddest, and the long years that were to come, the dreariest that I had ever known.

Jamie is my husband now; and we are very, very happy, but I pray every night that my heart may not grow hard and cold But again he said, "Annie !" and took my hand and drew again, and that I may never forget that God has placed in my

face of the walrus has a very human look, and this probably modern. A house could not be too new for her. She liked to gave rise to the report that it was the merman of the Northern seas. The capture of the walrus is so dangerous that the hunters use the utmost caution, and generally attack it when they catch it on land. The ivory of its tusks is very much prized, being very hard and white. It does not yield much oil, the largest giving about thirty to thirty-five gallons. Its skin, which is about an inch thick, makes excellent leather.