boots. An aged minister stood beside the rough couch. The form was that of a strong man grown old through care more than age. There was a face that you might look upon but once, and yet wear it in your memory for ever. 2. Let us bend over the bed, and look upon that face, a bold forehead seamed by one deep wrinkle visible between the brows-long locks of dark hair, sprinkled with gray; lips firmly set, yet quivering, as though they had a life separate from the life of the man ; and then, two large eyes-vivid, burning, unnatural in their steady glare. Ay, there was something terrible in that face-something so full of unutterable loneliness-unspeakable despair, that the aged minister started back in horror. 3. But look! those strong arms are clutching at the vacant air: the death-sweat stands in drops on that bold brow-the man is dying. Throb-throb-throb-beats the death-watch in the shattered wall. "Would you die in the faith of the Christian?" faltered the preacher, as he knelt there on the damp floor. 4. The white lips of the death-stricken man trembled, but made no sound. Then, with the strong agony of death upon him, he rose into a sitting posture. For the first time he spoke. "Christian!" he echoed in that deep tone which thrilled the preacher to the heart: "Will that faith give me back my honor? Come with me, old man, come with me, far over the waters. Ha! we are there! 5. "This is my native town. Yonder is the church in which I knelt in childhood; yonder the green on which I sported when a boy. But another flag waves yonder, in place of the flag that waved when I was a child. And listen, old man, were I to pass along the streets, as I passed when but a child, the very babes in their cradles would raise their tiny hands, and curse me! The graves in yonder churchyard would shrink from my footsteps; and yonder flag would rain a baptism of blood upon my head!" 6. That was an awful death-bed. The minister had watched "the last night" with a hundred convicts in their cells, but had never beheld a scene so terrible as this. Suddenly the dying man arose; he tottered along the floor. With those white fingers, whose nails were blue with the death-chill, he threw open a valise. He drew from thence a faded coat of blue, faced with silver, and the wreck of a battle-flag. 7. "Look ye, priest! this faded coat is spotted with my blood!" he cried, as old memories seemed stirring at his heart. "This coat I wore, when I first heard the news of Lexington: this coat I wore, when I planted the banner of the stars on Ticonderoga! that bullet-hole was pierced in the fight of Quebec; and now, I am a--let me whisper it in your ear!" 8. He hissed that single burning word into the minister's ear: "Now help me, priest! help me to put on this coat of blue; for you see"-and a ghastly smile came over his face"there is no one here to wipe the cold drops from my brow; no wife; no child. I must meet Death alone; but I will meet him, as I have met him in battle, without a fear!" 9. And, while he stood arraying his limbs in that wormeaten coat of blue and silver, the good minister spoke to him of faith in Jesus. Yes, of that great faith, which pierces the clouds of human guilt, and rolls them back from the face of God. 10. "Faith!" echoed that strange man, who stood there, erect, with the death-chill on his brow, "Faith! Can it give me back my honor? Look ye, priest! there, over the waves, sits George Washington, telling to his comrades the pleasant story of the eight years' war; there, in his royal halls, sits George of England, bewailing, in his idiotic voice, the loss of his colonies! And here am I'-I, who was the first to raise the flag of freedom, the first to strike a blow against that king -here am I, dying! oh, dying like a dog!" 11. The awe-stricken preacher started back from the look of the dying man, while throb-throb-throb-beats the death-watch, in the shattered wall. "Hush! silence along the lines there!" he muttered, in that wild, absent tone, as though speaking to the dead; "silence along the lines! not a word-not a word, on peril of your lives! 12. "Hark you, Montgomery! we will meet in the center of the town:-we will meet there in victory, or die!—Hist! silence, my men—not a whisper, as we move up those steep rocks! Now on, my boys-now on! Men of the wilderness, we will gain the town! Now up with the banner of the stars -up with the flag of freedom, though the night is dark, and the snow falls! Now! now, one more blow, and Quebec is ours!" 13. And look! his eye grows glassy. With that word on his lips, he stands there-ah! what a hideous picture of despair: erect, livid, ghastly: there for a moment, and then he falls he is dead! Ah, look at that proud form, thrown cold and stiff upon the damp floor. 14. In that glassy eye there lingers, even yet, a horrible energy-a sublimity of despair. Who is this strange man lying there alone, in this rude garret: this man, who, in all his crimes, still treasured up with that blue uniform, that faded flag? Who is this being of horrible remorse this man, whose memories seem to link something with heaven, and more with hell? 15. Let us look at that parchment and flag. The aged minister unrolls that faded flag; it is a blue banner gleaming with thirteen stars. He unrolls that parchment: it is a colonel's commission in the Continental army addressed to Benedict Arnold! And there, in that rude hut, while the death-watch throbbed like a heart in the shattered wall: there, unknown, unwept, in all the bitterness of desolation, lay the corse of the patriot and the traitor. 16. Oh, that our own true Washington had been there, to sever that good right arm from the corse; and, while the dishonored body rotted into dust, to bring home that noble arm, and embalm it among the holiest memories of the past. For that right arm struck many a gallant blow for freedom: yonder at Ticonderoga, at Quebec, Champlain, and Saratoga-that arm, yonder, beneath the snow white mountains, in the deep silence of the river of the dead, first raised into light the Banner of the Stars. LESSON CXXV. THE OLD SERGEANT. FORCEYTHE WILLSON. 1. THE carrier cannot sing to-day the ballads Rhyming the glad rounds of the happy New Years 2. For the same awful and portentous shadow And smote the land last year with desolation, 3. And the carrier hears Beethoven's mighty death-march Come up from every mart; And he hears and feels it breathing in his bosom, 4. And to-day, a scarred and weather-beaten veteran, To tell the story of the Old Year's struggles, 5. And the song is his, but not so with the story; Was told in prose to Assistant Surgeon Austin, 6. By Robert Burton, who was brought up on the Adams, With his death-wound in his side; And who told the story to the assistant surgeon 7. But the singer feels it will better suit the ballad, To tell the story as if what it speaks of 8. "Come a little nearer, doctor;-thank you,-let me take the cup; Draw your chair up,-draw it closer,-just another little sup! Maybe you may think I'm better; but I'm pretty well used up; Doctor, you've done all you could do, but I'm just a going up! 9. "Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't much use to try-" "Never say that,” said the surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh; It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!" "What you say will make no difference, doctor, when you come to die." 10. "Doctor, what has been the matter?" faint, they say; You must try to get some sleep now." been away?" "You were very "Doctor, have I "Not that anybody knows of!" "Doctor,-doctor, please to stay! There is something I must tell you, and you won't have long to stay! 11. "I have got my marching orders, and I'm ready now to go; Doctor, did you say I fainted? but it couldn't ha' been So, For as sure as I'm a sergeant, and was wounded at Shiloh, I've this very night been back there, on the old field of Shiloh ! 12. "This is all that I remember! The last time the lighter came, And the lights had all been lowered, and the noises much the same, |