or low is of no importance. You have my name | ity, whatever you may pretend to think, as you very correctly. Pray what is yours?"

"It can not concern you much to know, but-" "True," interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his mistake, "it does not concern me at all to know. I can say Schoolmaster, which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster."

It was not the dullest part of this goad in its galling of Bradley Headstone, that he had made it himself in a moment of incautious anger. He tried to set his lips so as to prevent their quivering, but they quivered fast.

"Mr. Eugene Wrayburn," said the boy, "I want a word with you. I have wanted it so much that we have looked out your address in the book, and we have been to your office, and we have come from your office here."

"You have given yourself much trouble, Schoolmaster," observed Eugene, blowing the feathery ash from his cigar. "I hope it may prove remunerative."

"And I am glad to speak," pursued the boy, "in presence of Mr. Lightwood, because it was through Mr. Lightwood that you ever saw my sister."

For a mere moment Wrayburn turned his eyes aside from the schoolmaster to note the effect of the last word on Mortimer, who, standing on the opposite side of the fire, as soon as the word was spoken turned his face toward the fire and looked down into it.

"Similarly, it was through Mr. Lightwood that you ever saw her again, for you were with him on the night when my father was found, and so I found you with her on the next day. Since then you have seen my sister often. You have seen my sister oftener and oftener. want to know why?"

And I

"Was this worth while, Schoolmaster?" murmured Eugene, with the air of a disinterested adviser. "So much trouble for nothing? You should know best, but I think not."

"I don't know, Mr. Wrayburn," answered Bradley, with his passion rising, "why you address me-"

smoke, than you could produce, if you tried. Then, what do we find? What do we find, Mr. Lightwood? Why, we find that my sister is already being taught without our knowing it. We find that while my sister gives an unwilling and cold ear to our schemes for her advantage -I, her brother, and Mr. Headstone, the most competent authority, as his certificates would easily prove, that could be produced-she is willfully and willingly profiting by other schemes. Ay, and taking pains too, for I know what such pains are. And so does Mr. Headstone! Well! Somebody pays for this, is a thought that naturally occurs to us; who pays? We apply ourselves to find out, Mr. Lightwood, and we find that your friend, this Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, here, pays. Then I ask him what right has he to do it, and what does he mean by it, and how comes he to be taking such a liberty without my consent, when I am raising myself in the scale of society by my own exertions and Mr. Headstone's aid, and have no right to have any darkness cast upon my prospects, or any imputation upon my respectability through my sister?"

The boyish weakness of this speech, combined with its great selfishness, made it a poor one indeed. And yet Bradley Headstone, used to the little audience of a school, and unused to the larger ways of men, showed a kind of exultation in it.

"Now I tell Mr. Eugene Wrayburn," pursued the boy, forced into the use of the third person by the hopelessness of addressing him in the first, "that I object to his having any acquaintance at all with my sister, and that I request him to drop it altogether. He is not to take it into his head that I am afraid of my sister's caring for him—" (As the boy sneered, the Master sneered, and Eugene blew off the feathery ash again.)

-"But I object to it, and that's enough. I am more important to my sister than he thinks. As I raise myself, I intend to raise her; she knows that, and she has to look to me for her prospects. Now I understand all this very well, and so does Mr. Headstone. My sister is an "Don't you?" said Eugene. "Then I won't." excellent girl, but she has some romantic noHe said it so tauntingly in his perfect placid- tions; not about such things as your Mr. Eugene ity, that the respectable right-hand clutching the Wrayburns, but about the death of my father respectable hair-guard of the respectable watch and other matters of that sort. Mr. Wrayburn could have wound it round his throat and stran-encourages those notions to make himself of imgled him with it. Not another word did Eu-portance, and so she thinks she ought to be grategene deem it worth while to utter, but stood ful to him, and perhaps even likes to be. Now leaning his head upon his hand, smoking, and I don't choose her to be grateful to him, or to be looking imperturbably at the chafing Bradley grateful to any body but me, except Mr. HeadHeadstone with his clutching right-hand, until stone. And I tell Mr. Wrayburn that if he Bradley was well-nigh mad. don't take heed of what I say, it will be worse for her. Let him turn that over in his memory, and make sure of it. Worse for her!"

A pause ensued, in which the schoolmaster looked very awkward.

"Mr. Wrayburn," proceeded the boy, "we not only know this that I have charged upon you, but we know more. It has not yet come to my sister's knowledge that we have found it out, but we have. We had a plan, Mr. Head- "May I suggest, Schoolmaster," said Eugene, stone and I, for my sister's education, and for removing his fast-waning cigar from his lips to its being advised and overlooked by Mr. Head-glance at it, "that you can now take your pupil stone, who is a much more competent author- away."

"And Mr. Lightwood," added the boy, with a burning face, under the flaming aggravation of getting no sort of answer or attention, "I hope you'll take notice of what I have said to your friend, and of what your friend has heard me say, word by word, whatever he pretends to the contrary. You are bound to take notice of it, Mr. Lightwood, for, as I have already mentioned, you first brought your friend into my sister's company, and but for you we never should have seen him. Lord knows none of us ever wanted him, any more than any of us will ever miss him. Now, Mr. Headstone, as Mr. Eugene Wrayburn has been obliged to hear what I had to say, and couldn't help himself, and as I have said it out to the last word, we have done all we wanted to do, and may go."

"Go down stairs, and leave me a moment, Hexam," he returned. The boy complying with an indignant look and as much noise as he could make, swung out of the room; and Lightwood went to the window, and leaned there, looking

out.

'Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone." "As you justly said, my good Sir, your name can not concern me. Now, what more?"

"This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine," cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot, "that I can not so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself!" He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself.

Eugene Wrayburn looked on at him, as if he found him beginning to be rather an entertaining study.

"Mr. Wrayburn, I desire to say something to you on my own part."

"Come, come, Schoolmaster," returned Eugene, with a languid approach to impatience as the other again struggled with himself; "say what you have to say. And let me remind you that the door is standing open, and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs."

"You think me of no more value than the dirt under your feet," said Bradley to Eugene, "When I accompanied that youth here, Sir, speaking in a carefully weighed and measured I did so with the purpose of adding, as a man tone, or he could not have spoken at all. whom you should not be permitted to put aside, "I assure you, Schoolmaster," replied Eu- in case you put him aside as a boy, that his ingene, "I don't think about you." stinct is correct and right." Thus Bradley

"That's not true," returned the other; "you Headstone, with great effort and difficulty. know better."

"That's coarse," Eugene retorted; "but you don't know better."

“Mr. Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad who has just gone out could put you to shame in half a dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior. You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.”

"Possibly," remarked Eugene.

"But I am more than a lad," said Bradley, with his clutching hand, "and I WILL be heard, Sir."

"As a schoolmaster," said Eugene, "you are always being heard. That ought to content you."

"But it does not content me," replied the other, white with passion. "Do you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties I discharge, and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well, dismisses a man's nature ?"

"I suppose you," said Eugene, "judging from what I see as I look at you, to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster." As he spoke, he tossed away the end of his cigar.

"Passionate with you, Sir, admit I am. Passionate with you, Sir, I respect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils." "For your Teachers, I should rather say," replied Eugene.

"Mr. Wrayburn." "Schoolmaster."

"Is that all?" asked Eugene.

"No, Sir," said the other, flushed and fierce. "I strongly support him in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection to your officiousness—and worse-in what you have taken upon yourself to do for her."

"Is that all?" asked Eugene.

"No, Sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister."

"Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother's? Or perhaps you would like to be?" said Eugene.

It was a stab that the blood followed, in its rush to Bradley Headstone's face, as swiftly as if it had been dealt with a dagger. "What do you mean by that?" was as much as he could utter.

"A natural ambition enough," said Eugene, coolly. "Far be it from me to say otherwise. The sister-who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps-is so very different from all the associations to which she has been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a very natural ambition."

"Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr. Wrayburn ?"

"That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning it, Schoolmaster, and seek to know nothing.'

"

"You reproach me with my origin," said Bradley Headstone; "you cast insinuations at my bringing-up. But I tell you, Sir, I have worked my way onward, out of both and in spite of both, and have a right to be considered

on, he went out with these words, and the heavy | Don't let us sing Fal la, my dear Mortimer door closed like a furnace-door upon his red and white heats of rage.

"What were your words that night at the river-side public house?" said Lightwood, stop-myself with moral influences expressly meant to ping. "What was it that you asked me? Did I feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when I thought of that girl?"

"I seem to remember the expression," said with your best wishes." Eugene.

ly, now standing near him, so that they both stood in one little cloud of smoke; "I would that you answered my three questions! What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?"

"And my dear Mortimer," returned Eugene, lightly fanning away the smoke with his hand for the better exposition of his frankness of face

and manner, "believe me, I would answer them instantly if I could. But to enable me to do so, I must first have found out the troublesome conundrum long abandoned. Here it is. Eugene Wrayburn." Tapping his forehead and breast. "Riddle-me, riddle-me-rce, perhaps you can't tell me what this may be?—No, upon my life, I can't. I give it up!"

Monthly Record of Current Events.

UNITED STATES.

HE present Number being the first of a Volume

on the 21st of October, embracing the events of the preceding three weeks.

the retreat from Moscow. He had been accused of abandoning Georgia to her fate. The man who derstood to refer to Governor Brown of Georgia.] He knew the deep disgrace felt by Georgia at the army falling back from Dalton to the interior of the

The approaching Presidential election, which will be decided before this Number is issued, and polit-State; but he was not one who felt that Atlanta was ical speculations connected with it, has taken precedence in public interest even of the important military events of the time. State elections were held in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana on the 11th of October. Special importance was attached to these on account of the indications furnished by them of the probable result of the approaching Presidential election. Both parties at first claimed what was equivalent to a decided victory in all of these States. The precise actual result is still in doubt, owing to the delay occasioned by the counting of the vote of the soldiers. In Pennsylvania the election was for Members of Congress. The home vote was very close; but the probability is that upon this vote the Democrats have a small aggregate majority, which it is supposed will be considerably counterbalanced by the soldiers' vote; the probability is that the Union party has gained from two to four members of Congress.-In Ohio the election was also for Members of Congress. The Union majority upon the home vote was large (probably about 30,000), though much less than at the previous election, and this will be increased by the soldiers' vote. They also gain several Members of Congress.In Indiana the election was for Governor and Members of Congress. Here, contrary to expectation, the Democrats suffered a decided defeat. Governor Morton, the Union candidate, being re-elected by a majority of probably 20,000, the party also gaining several Members of Congress. In this State the soldiers absent from their homes do not vote.

lost when the army crossed the Chattahoochee, and
he had put a man at the head of the army who
would strike a manly blow for the city. It did not
become him to revert to disaster.
Hood's army
must be replenished. "Let," he said, "the old
men remain at home and make bread; but should
they know of any young man keeping away from
the service, who can not be made to go any other
way, let them write to the Executive. You have
not many men left between the ages of eighteen
and forty-five. The boys are, as rapidly as they
become old enough, going to the field. It is not
proper," he continued, "to speak of the number of
men in the field; but this I will say-that two-
thirds of our men are absent, some sick, some wound-
ed, but most of them absent without leave." We
had been asked to send reinforcements from Vir-
ginia to Georgia; but the disparity in numbers was
as great in Virginia as in Georgia. The army un-
der Early had been sent to the Valley of the Shen-
andoah, instead of to Georgia, because the enemy
had penetrated to Lynchburg; and now (that is, at
the close of September), if Early was withdrawn,
there was nothing to prevent the Federal troops
from putting a complete cordon of men around Rich-
mond. He had counseled with General Lee upon
all these points; his mind had roamed over the
whole field, and his conclusion was that "if one
half of the men now absent from the field would re-
turn to duty, we can defeat the enemy. With that
hope I am now going to the front. I may not rea-
lize this hope; but I know that there are men there
who have looked death too often in the face to de-
spond now." This speech was repeated in substance
at several other places.

An election was held in Maryland, on the 12th of October, to decide upon the adoption of a new Constitution providing for the abolition of Slavery. The vote was light, owing in a measure to the requirement of an oath of loyalty from voters. There was, probably, a small majority against the Constitution on the home vote; but this is presumed to be over-ed to persons between the ages of eighteen and come by the soldiers' vote.

Toward the close of September Jefferson Davis made a journey to Georgia. In the course of this he made several speeches upon the posture of affairs. The most elaborate of these was delivered at Macon on the 23d of September. He said that it would have gladdened his heart to have met his auditors in prosperity instead of adversity. Still, though misfortune had befallen the Confederates from Decatur to Jonesborough, the cause was not lost. Sooner or later Sherman must retreat, and then he would meet the fate that befell Napoleon in

An order of the Confederate War Office, dated October 5, directs that all details heretofore grant

forty-five shall be revoked, and that all persons detailed, together with those who hold temporary furloughs and exemptions, shall assemble at the several camps of instruction, and will be at once assigned among the armies for service; but men now actively engaged in producing or collecting munitions and supplies will for the present be continued in these employments. The heads of Departments are directed within twenty days to furnish lists of all detailed men in the several States, specifying those whose services are absolutely indispensable for Government work or business; all not so speci

fied to be forthwith assigned to the army; and all men found for light duty who do not at once report to the camps of instruction to be assigned to the active force.

Border States; and finally to establish a Northwestern Confederacy. Judge Holt furnishes an immense mass of evidence in support of these allegations.

It has been affirmed that many of the leading men of Georgia, including Governor Brown and Alexander H. Stephens, were in favor of that State withdrawing from the Confederacy and making a separate peace; and that negotiations to that effect had been opened with General Sherman. The Governor has authorized the publication of a statement explanatory of his position in the matter. He says that a Mr. King brought to him a message from General Sherman to the effect that he would be pleased to confer with him and others upon the state of the country, with a view to a settlement of the difficulties, and would give him a pass through the Federal lines, going and returning, for that purpose. To this the Governor replied that he as Governor of a State, and General Sherman as a commander of an army in the field, had no authority to enter upon negotiations for peace. Georgia might per

By various laws now existing in the Confederacy all free negroes between the ages of 18 and 45 are made liable to perform military duty upon fortifications and in Government works. The Secretary of War is also empowered to employ in a similar manner 20,000 slaves, the owners to be paid in case of their escape or death. If they can not be hired they may be impressed. The Southern papers urge that these laws shall be carried into immediate execution. The Richmond Enquirer of October 6 also urges that free negroes and slaves shall be employed as soldiers. It recommends that the Confederate Congress shall purchase 250,000 negroes, present them with their freedom, grant them the privilege of remaining in the States, and arm, equip, drill, and fight them. It says that these freedmen could be depended upon not only for ordinary services, but for the hardest fighting.-A letter from Henry W. Allen, Governor of Louisiana, to Mr. Sed-haps be overrun, but could not be subjugated, and don, the Confederate Secretary of War, dated Sep- would never treat with a conqueror upon her soil. tember 26, has been captured, in which he urges That while Georgia possessed the sovereign power the employment of negroes as soldiers. He says: to act separately, her faith had been pledged by imThe time has come for us to put into the army plication to her Southern sisters, and she would not every able-bodied negro man as a soldier. This exercise this power without their consent and coshould be done immediately....We have learned operation. She had entered into the contest knowfrom dear-bought experience that negroes can be ing all the responsibilities which it involved, and taught to fight, and that all who leave us are made would never withdraw from it with dishonor. "She to fight against us. I would free all able to bear will never," he says, "make separate terms with arms, and put them into the field at once. They the enemy, which may free her territory from invawill make much better soldiers with us than against sion and leave her confederates in the lurch. Whatus, and swell the now depleted ranks of our armies." ever may be the opinion of her people as to the inThe existence of an organized conspiracy in the justice done her by the Confederate Administration, Western and Northwestern States, with accom- she will triumph with her confederate sisters, or she plices in other portions of the country, has been for will sink with them in common ruin....the indesome months known to the Government. Some pendent expression of condemnation of the measof the conspirators have been arrested, and the re-ures of the Administration is one thing, and dissults of their trial have been summed up by Mr. Holt, the Judge-Advocate. The essential points are that a secret society has been formed, known by different names in different localities. Its "temples," or " lodges," are numerously scattered through the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky, and less frequently in many other States -every State, it is said, being represented. first "Supreme Commander" was P. C. Wright, the acting editor of a newspaper in New York called the Daily News, the ostensible editor of which is Benjamin Wood, a member of the Federal Congress. Wright was arrested and imprisoned in Fort Lafayette. He was, according to Judge Holt, succeeded by Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio. The number of members is variously stated at from 300,000 to 1,000,000; Vallandigham claimed in a public speech that there were 500,000. This society, or order, is in close affiliation with the Confederate leaders. Its organization is military, and the members are in possession of a large number of arms. Its leading principles are the right of slavery; the absolute sovereignty of the States; the right of secession of a State; and the right of resistance to Federal authority. Its specific objects at present are to aid soldiers to desert; to protect deserters; to discourage enlistments; to resist the draft; to circulate disloyal publications; to give intelligence to the enemy; to aid recruiting for the enemy; to furnish them with arms and ammunition; to co-operate with them in raids; to destroy Government property; to harass Union men in the

Its

loyalty to our sacred cause is another and quite a different thing." If Mr. Lincoln would stop the war, let him, says Governor Brown, recognize the sovereignty of the States, and leave to each to determine for herself whether she will return to the old Union or remain in her present league. If Presidents Lincoln and Davis would agree to stop the war, and leave the settlement of the question to the ballot-box instead of the battle-field, bloodshed would cease, and prosperity be restored. If not, the war would last for years, and neither General Sherman nor the Governor of Georgia could control this issue however they might deplore it. But, he concludes, if those who have the Constitutional power of negotiation refuse to recognize the sovereignty of the States, then, all the States, north and south, in their official capacity, may be justified in taking the matter into their own hands, and settling the question in their own way. -Alexander H. Stephens has also published a letter setting forth his views on the state of affairs. He says, in substance, that he sees no way in which he can do any thing to bring about peace. The only solution for present and prospective troubles is "the simple recognition of the fundamental principle of the sovereignty

the ultimate absolute sovereignty-of the States." The idea that the old Union, or any Union between sovereign States, can be maintained by force is preposterous; the subjugation of the people of the South by those of the North would involve the overthrow of the liberties of both sections. The platform of the Chicago Convention presented a ray of light. Its