"Of course I was interested in what he was doing. I need not say that he was doing it thoroughly well. He loved work. He loved the country. He believed in the cause. And off there, at that strange little post, curiously separated from the grand armies, and in many matters reporting direct to Washington, he was cadi, viceroy, commissary, chief-engineer, schoolmaster, minister, major-general, and everything, under his modest major's maple-leaves.

"Strictly speaking, I had no right to read his reports. But then I did read them. I liked to know what he was doing. At last, one day, I happened to notice that he had misunderstood one of the service regulations about returns, which had made us infinite trouble. I knew all about it. But it had confused Harry. I was glad I observed it before they did, and I wrote to him at once about it. I knew it might save him money to notice it; for they would stop his pay while they notified him. I wrote. But he never got the letter. The next week and the next this same variation in his accounts-keeping came in. One part of it sprang from his not understanding where the apostrophes belonged in 'Commissaries' wagoners' assistants' rations. I wrote to him again and again and again. Four letters I wrote; but Sherman and Hardee and Benham and Hayes, and I do not know who, were raising Ned with the communications, and he never got one of my letters. And when the sixth of these accounts of his came, well, I was in debt, I wanted a change, well, your Doctor to-day would have said the Devil came. I wish I thought it was anybody's fault but mine. What did I do, but send over to the Quartermaster's for the whole series, which we had sent back; and then I went up to the chief, I sent in my card, and I said to him that my attention had been called to this obliquity in accounts, that I had warned Mr Harry Patrick, because I had formerly known him, that he was not construing the act correctly -that he persisted in drawing as he did, and making the returns as he did, and that, in short, though strictly it was not my business, yet, as it would be some months before the papers would be reached in order, (this was a lie,-they had really come to the first of them,) I thought it my duty to the government to call attention to the matter. As we both knew, I said, it was an isolated post,and an officer did not pass under the same observation as in most stations.

"Yes, I said all that. It was awful. I can't tell you wholly how or why I said it. I did not guess it would turn out as it did. I did hope I should be sent out on special service to inspect. But I did not think of anything more. But a man cannot have just what he chooses. The chief had his cigar, and was comfortable, and knew no more about this post than you do, and asked

me, in a patronizing way, about it, not confessing ignorance, but as a great man will. That temptation I could not resist. Who can? At all events, I could not resist. I stood, I sat at last, when he asked me,- and told him the whole story, adorned as I chose.

"The next day he sent for me again; and I found more than my boldest hopes had fancied,- that he was thinking of displacing poor Harry, and putting me there as his substitute. Of course I blocked his wheels, you say, and explained. No such thing, I snapped at the promotion! Don't make me tell the whole it was too nasty. The end was, that I was ordered to leave Washington with a colonel's commission, outranking Harry two grades, with the right to name my staff when I got upon the ground. Poor Harry was to report in person to the Department, in disgrace.

:

Here was a prize vastly higher than I had sought for. I was not very happy with it. But I had the grace to say to myself that I could pay my debts now, and would never go in debt again. I would even pay poor Harry, I thought; but then I had another qualm, as I remembered that there were near three thousand dollars due to him, and that even a colonel's pay and allowances would not stand that, in the first quarter. I went home and told Jenny. I did not tell her where I was going. I only told her it was promotion, and high promotion. I bade her take comfort; and that very afternoon I turned over my papers and keys to her and hurried away.

He

"I went on to Willston. I got there. I found Harry. was amazed to see me. He was delighted. He took me right into his own little den, asked if there was bad news, asked what brought me, and—well, my friends, the worst thing in my life was my telling him I had superseded him!

"And now, do you believe I had the face to say to him that it was the saddest moment of my life? That was true enough, God knows! But I said more. I dared tell him that I had had no bream of what was in the wind. That I did not receive my orders till I had left Washington, and that I had not a thought or suspicion who could have been caballing against him at the Department! I told him this, when I knew I had done the whole!

"Good fellow! He cried. I believe I did. He said, 'I can't talk about it'; and he hurried away. I did not see him again. till the war was done. I went out and found the gentlemen of his staff. Of course they hated me. By and by I had my own staff. They did not love me. It was Saturday night that I arrived. Sunday I dressed up and attended religious worship with the garrison.' Do you believe, the chaplain, a little wiry Sandemanian preacher, chose to tell those men, The way of transgres

sors is hard.'

And I had to stand and take it, without the consolation I am giving myself to-day.

"It was not he that told me,- what I found out the night before, when I quailed under Harry's eye,- that it is the way that is hard. I tell you it was very hard for me to go through the routine of life there. As for success,- why, if Vesuvius had started up next door to us and overwhelmed us, I should not have cared.

"I suppose you know what happened. There never should have been any post at Willston. We were there to make Union sentiment.' In fact, the Rebels lived on us, laughed at us, and hated us. Harry did conciliate some people, I think, and frightened more. I conciliated nobody, and frightened nobody. I had begun wrong. 'Sinful heart makes feeble hand,' and it makes feeble head too, and, worse than that, a man can't make any friends of himself or anybody else with it. I tried a great diplomatic dodge. There was a lot of rice on a plantation, and I started a private negotiation with one Haraden who owned it,not for myself, really, but for government. We wanted the rice. Then my chief woke up one day from a long sleep, and sent us a perfectly impossible string of instructions. Then I heard that Dick Wagstaff, one of the enemy's light-horse, was threatening my outpost at Walker. I did not know what to do. How should I? But I put on a bold face, and marched out the garrison, and went part way to Walker; and then I thought I had better go down to Haraden's and then, I tell you, it was just like a horrid dream, then I remembered that the gunboats might have been sent up to help us, and I sent an express for them, and marched that way; but then news came that we had been wrong about Walker, and I thought we had better cross back there. But while we were crossing, there came an awful rain. We could not get the guns on, and had to stop over night, not only in the wettest place you ever saw, but in the only place we ought not to have been in at all. And there, at the gray of morning, before my men could or would start a cannon, down came Dick Wagstaff's flying squadron. What is worst is that we found out, afterwards, there were but forty of them, and yet, in one horrid muddle of confusion, we left the guns, left what rice we had got, left ever so many men who had not time to tumble up, and, indeed, we hardly got back alive to Willston. If Dick Wagstaff had known his business half as well as he was thought to, not one of us would have seen the place again. But the queer thing of all this shame and disgrace to me was, that it almost comforted me. I remember my mother used to flog me when I was sulky, and say she would give me something to cry for. As we trailed back through the mud, it fairly pleased me to think that now, if I looked like a

cursed hang-dog, people would not wonder. My outside was as bad at last as my in. I remember, as we came to the last bridge over the Coosa River, I, who was riding after the rear of the column, overtook McMurdy,-this chaplain I told you of. He was walking leading his own horse, on which sat or crouched a man faint as death, so he could hardly hold on. I made McMurdy take my horse and trudged beside him for the rest of the way. "This is pretty hard, Doctor,' said I.

"Hard for us,' said the grim little man, 'but not so hard for us as for the Graybacks.'

"I don't see that,' said I. But in a minute I saw that the little man was clear grit, and true to his cloth.

"He set his teeth, and said: 'Not so hard for us, because we are right, and they are wrong. Every dog has his day, Colonel. They are bound to come to grief when the clock strikes for them.'

"Poor little Doctor. He preached at me harder, when he said that, than the first day I saw him, when he was 'secondlying it,' and in conclusioning it,' to the men. I made my mouth up to say, 'The way of transgressors is hard, Doctor.' But the cant stuck in my throat. That would have been too steep. Who was I, to say it? I said nothing. He said nothing. But I trailed after him, up to my knees in that Alabama mud; and I said to myself, It is the way that's hard. It is not the consequence that is hard, nor the punishment. That is rather easy in comparison. And I spoke aloud: 'It's the way.' Just then a contraband's mule pitched into me, almost knocked me down, and the little. nigger said to me: Beg pardon, massa; Jordan mighty hard road to trabbel to-night.' I did not swear at him. I stood by and let him pass. And I said to myself: Mighty hard. It is the way that's hard, and not the bed you lie on at the end of it.'

-

"Indeed, at that very moment of misery, utter failure, beastly defeat, I felt the first reaction from the misery that had galled me ever since I lied to Harry's face. This was the end at last. All that was the way.

"As soon as they heard of all this, of course I was relieved, in disgrace. I was bidden to report at Washington, just as Patrick had done. I swear to you I was a happier man than I had been since the day he left me there."

Mr. Frye stopped. And then he walked up and down the room. It was long since he had smiled or pretended to. But he rested on a chair-back now, and said: "That is all the sermon. I shall feel better now I have told you. I shall never tell any one again. But one revelation of such a thing a man had better make, where it costs him something. So I am glad to have told you.'

دو

"You don't tell us

Mrs. Webber had her eyes full of tears. all," said she,— "you don't tell how you came here."

"That hardly belongs to the sermon," said he. "Yes, it does. When I met Jenny I told her the whole thing right through.

"Poor boy,' said she; 'it is hard,' meaning to comfort me. "Jenny,' said I, 'it is hard. Drinking is hard; cheating is hard. You and I found that out before. And this infernal intriguing-politics, I believe they call it-is the hardest of all. It's a hard way, Jenny.'

"Body, mind, and soul,' said poor Jenny: 'it is hard any way'; -and she cried.

"So did I. And then I went across, and sent in my name to Harry. He was all right again, and brevetted brigadier. And I said, 'Harry, ten times you have lifted me out of the gutter; ten times I have gone in deeper than before. This time I help myself. This time I have found out, what till now I never believed that I carried failure with me-that I was therefore bound to fail, and had to fail. Harry,' said I, 'the very God in heaven does not choose to have a broken wire carry lightning, nor a lying life succeed. That's why I've failed. Now see me help myself.'

"Harry gave me both his hands, shook mine heartily, and we said good-bye. I came on here, because here I had been in the mud. I started this little patent about the clothes-brushes. I let the results look out for themselves. For me, all I care for now is the way. I pay as I go; and I take care that Jordan shall be an easy road to travel. Harry came on last fall, and we ate our thanksgiving together at Jenny's father's.

"That is all my sermon."

We agreed among the boarders that we would not mention this. But last Sunday, at a church I was at in Boothia Felix, the man led us through three quarters of an hour of what my grandfather's spelling book would have called "trisyllables on ality, elity, and ility," and polysyllables in ation, ition, etion, and otion." It was three dreary quarters of abstract expression. When the fourth quarter began, he said, "History is full of illustrations of our doctrine, but I will not weary you by their repetition."

"Old Cove," said I, "I wish you would. If you would just take that lesson from Mr. Frye !" Or I should have said so, had the ritual and etiquette of that congregation permitted.