Rather high up on the wrist of the right was a bracelet; a bracelet of that soft, fine hair familiar to Vance. He recognised it now, and the tears threatened to overflow. Lifting the wrist to his lips he kissed it, and then, with a " God keep you!" entered the carriage, and was whirled away.

"It was the bracelet, not the wrist, he kissed," sighed Clara.

288

CHAPTER XIV.

TIME DISCOVERS AND COVERS.

Crito. How and where shall we bury you?

Socrates. Bury me in any way you please, if you can catch me to bury. Crito obstinately thinks, my friends, I am that which he shall shortly behold dead. Say rather, Crito-say if you love me, 'Where shall I bury your body'? and I will answer you, 'Bury it any manner and in any place you please.'- Plato.

ON rolled the months, nor slackened their speed because of the sufferings and the sighings with which they went freighted. Almost every day brought its battle or its skirmish. Almost every day men--sometimes many hundreds-would be shot dead, or be wounded and borne away in ambulances or on stretchers, not grudging the sacrifices they had made.

Oh,precious blood, not vainly shed! Oh, bereaved hearts, not unprofitably stricken! Do not doubt there shall be compensation. Do not doubt that every smallest effort, though seemingly fruitless,

rendered to the right, shall be an imperishable good both to yourselves and others.

On rolled the months, bringing alternate triumph and disaster, radiance and gloom, to souls waiting the salvation of the Lord. The summer of 1863 had come. There had been laurels for Murfreesboro' and crape for Chancellorville. Vicksburg and Port Hudson yet trembled in the balance. Pennsylvania was threatened with a Rebel invasion. The Emancipation Proclamation, gradual as the great processes of nature, was working its way, though not in the earthquake nor in the fire. Black regiments had been enlisted, and were beginning to answer the question, Will the negro fight?

On the sixth of June, 1863, a cavalry force of Rebels made their appearance some four miles from Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi, and attacked and drove a greatly inferior Union force, composed mainly of the Tenth Illinois cavalry.

Suddenly there rose up in their path, as if from the soil, two hundred and fifty black soldiers. They belonged to the Eleventh Louisiana African regiment, and were under the command of Colonel Lieb. They had never been in a fight before. The "chivalry" came on, expecting to see their

former bondsmen crouch and tremble at the first imperious word; but, to the dismay of the Rebels, they were met with such splendid bravery, that they turned and fled, and the Illinois men were saved.

The next day nine hundred and forty-one troops of African descent had a hand-to-hand engagement with a Texan brigade, commanded by McCulloch, . which numbered eighteen hundred and sixty-five. Three hundred and forty-five of the coloured troops were killed or wounded, though not till they had. put hors de combat twice that number of Rebels... The gunboat Choctaw finally came up to drive off the enemy.

Conspicuous for intrepid conduct on both these. occasions was a black man, slightly above the middle height, but broad-shouldered, well-formed, and athletic. Across his left cheek was a scar as if from a sabre-cut. This man had received the name of Peculiar Institution, but he was familiarly called Peek. On the second day his words and his example had inspired the men of his company with an almost superhuman courage. Bravely they stood their ground, and nowhere else on the field did so many of the enemy's dead attest the valour of these undrilled Africans.

One youth, apparently not seventeen, had fought

by Peek's side and under his eye with heroic defiance of danger. At last, venturing too far from the ranks, he got engaged with two Rebel officers, in a hand-to-hand encounter, and was wounded. Peek saw his danger, rushed to his aid, parried a blow aimed at the lad's life, and shot one of the..... infuriate officers; but as he was bearing the youth: back into the ranks, he was himself wounded in the side, and fell with his burden...

The boy's wound was not serious. He and Peek were borne within the protection of the guns of... the Choctaw. They lay in the shade cast by the Levee. The surgeon looked at Peek's wound, and shook his head. Then turning to the boy he exclaimed, "Why, Sterling, is this you?"

At the name of Sterling, Peek had roused himself and turned a gaze, at once of awe and curiosity, on the youth; then sending the surgeon to another sufferer, had beckoned to the boy to draw near.

"Is your name Sterling?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where were you born?"

"In Montreal."

"And your mother's name was Flora Jacobs, and your father's-Sterling! I am your father!"