host no hospitable alternative but to take him to the pier-head and show him the boat. The beauty of the night and the softness of the breeze had done the rest of the mischief-they had filled Allan with irresistible longings for a sail by moonlight. Prevented from accompanying his guest by professional hindrances which obliged him to remain on shore, the doctor, not knowing what else to do, had ventured on disturbing Midwinter rather than take the responsibility of allowing Mr. Armadale (no matter how well he might be accustomed to the sea) to set off on a sailing trip at midnight entirely by himself.

the wilds of Australia. Pouncing on an ex-boat of his own in the harbor. Excited on the tract which described the sufferings of the trav-instant by his favorite topic, Allan had left his eling-party, lost in a trackless wilderness, and in danger of dying by thirst, Allan announced that he had found something to make his friend's flesh creep, and began eagerly to read the passage aloud. Resolute not to sleep, Midwinter followed the progress of the adventure, sentence by sentence, without missing a word. The consultation of the lost travelers, with death by thirst staring them in the face; the resolution to press on while their strength lasted; the fall of a heavy shower, the vain efforts made to catch the rain-water, the transient relief experienced by sucking their wet clothes; the sufferings renewed a few hours after; the night-advance of the strongest of the party, leaving the weakest behind; the following a flight of birds when morning dawned; the discovery by the lost men of the broad pool of water that saved their lives -all this Midwinter's fast-failing attention mastered painfully, Allan's voice growing fainter "Come along, old boy!" cried Allan. "You're and fainter on his ear with every sentence that just in time for a frolic by moonlight!" was read. Soon the next words seemed to drop Midwinter suggested a frolic by daylight, and away gently, and nothing but the slowly-sinking an adjournment to bed in the mean time sound of the voice was left. Then the light in "Bed!" cried Allan, on whose harum-scarum the room darkened gradually; the sound dwin-high spirits Mr. Hawbury's hospitality had cerdled into delicious silence; and the last waking|tainly not produced a sedative effect. impressions of the weary Midwinter came peacefully to an end.

The next event of which he was conscious was a sharp ringing at the closed door of the hotel. He started to his feet with the ready alacrity of a man whose life has accustomed him to wake at the shortest notice. An instant's look round showed him that the room was empty; and a glance at his watch told him that it was close on midnight. The noise made by the sleepy servant in opening the door, and the tread the next moment of quick footsteps in the passage, filled him with a sudden foreboding of something wrong. As he hurriedly stepped forward to go out and make inquiry the door of the coffee-room opened, and the doctor stood before him.

"I am sorry to disturb you,” said Mr. Hawbury. "Don't be alarmed; there's nothing wrong."

"Where is my friend?" asked Midwinter. "At the pier-head," answered the doctor. "I am, to a certain extent, responsible for what he is doing now; and I think some careful person, like yourself, ought to be with him."

The hint was enough for Midwinter. He and the doctor set out for the pier immediately-Mr. Hawbury mentioning on the way the circumstances under which he had come to the hotel.

The time taken to make this explanation brought Midwinter and the doctor to the pierhead. There, sure enough, was young Armadale in the boat, hoisting the sail, and singing the sailor's "Yo-heave-ho!" at the top of his voice.

"Hear

him, doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse! Look at that and think of bed if you can!"

He pointed to the sea. The moon was shining in the cloudless heaven; the night breeze blew soft and steady from the land; the peaceful waters rippled joyfully in the silence and the glory of the night. Midwinter turned to the doctor, with a wise resignation to circumstances: he had seen enough to satisfy him that all words of remonstrance would be words simply thrown away.

"How is the tide ?" he asked.
Mr. Hawbury told him.

"Are the oars in the boat?"
"Yes."

"I am well used to the sea," said Midwinter, descending the pier steps. "You may trust me to take care of my friend, and to take care of the boat."

"Good-night, doctor!" shouted Allan. "Your whisky and water is delicious-your boat's a little beauty-and you're the best fellow I ever met in my life!"

The doctor laughed, and waved his hand; and the boat glided out from the harbor, with Midwinter at the helm.

As the breeze then blew they were soon abreast of the westward headland, bounding the bay of Poolvash; and the question was started whether they should run out to sea or keep along the shore. The wisest proceeding, in the event of the wind failing them, was to keep by the land. Midwinter altered the course of the boat, and they sailed on smoothly in a southwesterly direction, abreast of the coast.

Punctual to the appointed hour Allan had made his appearance at the doctor's house; explaining that he had left his weary friend so fast asleep on the sofa that he had not had the heart to wake him. The evening had passed pleasantly, and the conversation had turned on many subjects-until, in an evil hour, Mr. Hawbury had dropped a hint which showed that he was Little by little the cliffs rose in height, and fond of sailing, and that he possessed a pleasure-the rocks, massed wild and jagged, showed rifted

black chasms yawning deep in their seaward | boat's rope in his teeth, Midwinter secured one sides. Off the bold promontory called Spanish end, and lowered the other to Allan in the boat. Head Midwinter looked ominously at his watch. But Allan pleaded hard for half an hour more, if it's all safe on board." With those words he "Make that fast," he said, " and wait till I see and for a glance at the famous channel of the disappeared behind the bulwark. Sound, which they were now fast nearing, and of which he had heard some startling stories from the workmen employed on his yacht. The new change which Midwinter's compliance with this request rendered it necessary to make in the course of the boat, brought her close to the wind; and revealed, on one side, the grand view of the southernmost shores of the Isle of Man, and, on the other, the black precipices of the islet called the Calf, separated from the main land by the dark and dangerous channel of the Sound.

astonishment at his friend's excessive caution.' "Wait?" repeated Allan, in the blankest "What on earth does he mean? I'll be hanged if I wait-where one of us goes the other gees too!"

Once more Midwinter looked at his watch. "We have gone far enough," he said. by the sheet!" "Stand

"Stop!" cried Allan, from the bows of the boat. "Good God! here's a wrecked ship right ahead of us!"

the forward thwart of the boat; and, swinging
He hitched the loose end of the rope round
himself up the ladder, stood the next moment
on the deck. "Any thing very dreadful on
board ?" he inquired, sarcastically, as he and
his friend met.

replied.
Midwinter smiled. "Nothing whatever," he
"But I couldn't be sure that we were
to have the whole ship to ourselves till I got
over the bulwark and looked about me."

the wreck critically from stem to stern.
Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed
"Not much of a vessel," he said; "the

Midwinter let the boat fall off a little, and Frenchmen generally build better ships than looked where the other pointed.

There, stranded midway between the rocky boundaries on either side of the Sound-there, never again to rise on the living waters from her grave on the sunken rock; lost and lonely in the quiet night; high, and dark, and ghostly in the yellow moonshine, lay the Wrecked Ship.

"I know the vessel," said Allan, in great excitement. "I heard my workmen talking of her yesterday. She drifted in here on a pitchdark night when they couldn't see the lights. A poor old worn-out merchantman, Midwinter, that the shipbrokers have bought to break up. Let's run in and have a look at her."

Midwinter hesitated. All the old sympathics of his sea-life strongly inclined him to follow Allan's suggestion; but the wind was falling light, and he distrusted the broken water and the swirling currents of the channel ahead. "This is an ugly place to take a boat into when you know nothing about it," he said.

"Nonsense!" returned Allan. "It's as light as day, and we float in two feet of water."

Before Midwinter could answer the current caught the boat and swept them onward through the channel straight toward the Wreck.

"Lower the sail," said Midwinter, quietly, "and ship the oars. We are running down on her fast enough now, whether we like it or not."

Both well accustomed to the use of the oar, they brought the course of the boat under sufficient control to keep her on the smoothest side of the channel-the side which was nearest to the Islet of the Calf. As they came swiftly up with the wreck, Midwinter resigned his oar to Allan; and, watching his opportunity, caught a hold with the boat-hook on the forechains of the vessel. The next moment they had the boat safely in hand, under the lee of the Wreck. The ship's ladder used by the workmen hung over the forechains. Mounting it, with the

this."

in a momentary silence.
Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan

val.

"Frenchmen?" he repeated, after an inter-
"Is this vessel French ?"
"Yes."

"How do you know?"

told me. They know all about her."
"The men I have got at work on the yacht

face began to look, to Allan's eyes, unaccount-
Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy
ably pale in the moonlight.

"Did they mention what trade she was engaged in ?"

"Yes-the timber trade."

brown hand clutched him fast by the shoulder, As Allan gave that answer Midwinter's lean and Midwinter's teeth chattered in his head like the teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.

"Did they tell you her name ?" he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly to a whisper.

"They did, I think. But it has slipped my of yours are rather tight on my shoulder." memory. Gently, old fellow; those long claws

"Was the name-?" he stopped, removed
that were gathering on his forehead-"Was the
his hand, and dashed away the great drops
name La Grace de Dieu ?"

That's the name, sure enough. La Grace de
"How the deuce did you come to know it?
Dieu."

wark of the wreck.
At one bound Midwinter leapt on the bul-

horror that rang far and wide through the still-
"The boat!!!" he cried, with a scream of
ness of the night, and brought Allan instantly
to his side.

was loose on the water; and ahead, in the track
The lower end of the carelessly-hitched rope
of the moonlight, a small black object was float-
ing out of view. The boat was adrift.

S

SHERIDAN'S VICTORY OF

MIDDLETOWN.

HERIDAN'S battle-fields of Strasburg and Middletown are near neighbors. A regiment of infantry can march from one to another in two hours; and both are overlooked, almost overhung, by the bold brow of the Massanutten Mountain. Indeed, if Early, on the 18th of October, the day previous to his brilliant attack and singular defeat, wished to view the length and breadth of the Union position, he had only to ascend the conical height which rises like a citadel close in rear of the gigantic natural parapets of Fisher's Hill, where his own army lay intrenched. Along the base of this cone I had seen his musketry flashing in a spiteful semicircle during half an hour of the evening of the 22d of September, making a desperate and vain struggle to secure, not victory, but undisturbed retreat. That headlong, night-long flight and pursuit did not cease until Sheridan was south of Mount Crawford. Then he returned at his leisure, sweeping the fertile Shenandoah Valley from mountain to mountain with his cavalry, destroying every barn and every stack of forage, and turning once to wrest from Lomax his headquarter wagons, eleven of his twelve pieces of artillery, and two hundred prisoners. Fisher's Hill was abandoned because it presents no good defensible line on its southern slope. But four or five miles to the north of it Sheridan halted, and here was fought the extraordinary battle of the 19th of October.

The Union position was an echelon of three lines, posted on three separate crests of moderate height. The left and most advanced crest was held by the Army of Western Virginia; the central one, half a mile to the rear of the first, by the Nineteenth Corps; the right and rearmost by the Sixth Corps. Crook commanded the first step of the echelon, Emory the second, Wright the third. Behind Crook's left and at right angles to it, guarding against a turning movement from that quarter, lay a force about equivalent to a brigade, known as Kitching's Provisional Division. The fronts, and to some extent the flanks, of the Army of Western Virginia and of the Nineteenth Corps were strengthened by breast-works of logs and earth, with batteries in position. Between these two commands ran the Strasburg and Winchester pike, the great highway of this part of the valley. The entire echelon occupied by the infantry and artillery was at least three miles in length, in addition to which the rolling country on the right of the Sixth Corps was occupied by Torbert's superb cavalry. In front the position was impregnable except by a surprise, and to turn it was an enterprise so dangerous that it was hardly dreaded.

possibly goaded by them to an act of sublime desperation, he planned and performed the most audacious, most difficult, and best-executed nocturnal flank movement of the war. He had just received a reinforcement of twelve thousand men, which increased his strength to twenty-seven thousand. Eight thousand, it is reported, were unarmed; but they were organized and officered, and were thus ready for serv ice the moment they could get muskets; they needed only a successful attack to fit them out with the spoils of dead, wounded, and prisoners. Of this reinforcement, which arrived the day before the battle, we knew nothing. Indeed I suspect that we were very imperfectly aware of the condition of Early's army all the time that it lay in this position. Of course we had repeatedly pushed out strong reconnoitring columns; but to reconnoitre Fisher's Hill, with its bluffs and precipices and forests, was much like reconnoitring a first-class regular fortress; unless you stormed and took it you could not find out what was in it. Accordingly we no more knew the strength than we knew the designs of the army whose noiseless steps, like the footfalls of stealing panthers, were creeping upon us through that moonless, misty night of October. Early was equally uninformed, he was even misinformed, with regard to us. He attacked in the belief that the Sixth Corps was at Front Royal, whereas it was with us, and that Sheridan was in Washington, whereas he had come as far on his return as Winchester.

Before midnight Early's entire army was in motion. His cavalry and light artillery had orders to advance upon our right so as to occupy the attention of Torbert and of the Sixth Corps. His infantry marched in five columns, of which Gordon's, Ramseur's, and Pegram's were to place themselves by daybreak on the left-rear of the whole Union position, while Kershaw's and Wharton's should at the same hour be close under the intrenched crest held by the army of Western Virginia. To turn our left it was necessary to descend into the gorge at the base of the Massanutten Mountain, ford the north fork of the Shenandoah, and skirt Crook's position for miles, passing in some places within four hundred yards of his pickets. Three days previous the movement would have been impossible, as a brigade of our cavalry then held the road along which the rebels now filed without opposition. As it was, Early's enterprise was hazardous almost beyond parallel. Had we caught him in the midst of it we should have ruined him: our infantry would have cut his in two, while our cavalry would have prevented retreat to Fisher's Hill: he would have lost half his army, and we should not have lost a thousand men. But the management of the advance was admirable: the canBut it seems that it was not safe to rely on teens had been left in camp lest they should the timidity of Early. It is impossible not to clatter against the shanks of the bayonets: the accord admiration to this misguided man and men conducted themselves with the usual intelliunlucky General for his elasticity under misfor-gence of the American soldier, whether Northtune. Undismayed by three severe defeats, or ern or Southern; and this fearfully perilous

HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

night march under the nose of a powerful enemy was accomplished with a success little less than miraculous. There was a moment, indeed, when the audacious column trod on the brink of destruction. About two o'clock in the morning the pickets of the Fifth New York Heavy Artillery, serving as infantry in Kitching's Division, heard a rustling of underbrush and a muffled, multitudinous trampling. Two posts were relieved and sent into camp with the information. General Crook ordered his command to be upon the alert, and most of the front line went into the trenches. But there was not a private in the army, and hardly an officer, who believed that the often-beaten and badlybeaten Early would venture an attack. reconnoissance was sent out to see if the alarm No were well-founded; the gaps in the front line caused by the detachment of regiments on picket were not filled up from the reserve; and when the assault took place it found many muskets unloaded. An hour before daybreak the rebel infantry, shivering with cold, but formed and ready for battle, lay within six hundred yards of Union camps, which were either sleeping or only half awake with suspicion. On the extreme right was Gordon, diagonally in rear of the Nineteenth Corps; on the left of Crook, facing Kitching's provisional division, was Ramseur supported by Pegram; in front of Crook was Kershaw supported by Wharton. There is even an incredible story that Kershaw's men regularly relieved a portion of the pickets of the Army of Western Virginia.

That morning I was in my saddle before daybreak. The Second Division, Nineteenth Corps, was to make at early dawn a reconnoissance on Fisher's Hill; and General Emory had ordered that an aid should report to him the exact minute of the departure of the column. this circumstance as an example, probably curiI mention ous to civilians, of the careful supervision which a veteran officer maintains over his command. Accordingly I was with General Grover, the commander of the Second Division, waiting for the troops to move. The "awful rose of dawn," softened and sombred in color by thick morning mist, had just faintly blossomed over a low eastern crest, and dark lines of infantry were dimly visible in the gray light, when, far away on our left, a terrific rattle of musketry burst forth with amazing suddenness, followed by scream on scream of the well-known rebel battle-yell, the savage clamor revealing to us in an instant that Early, in great force, had assaulted Crook's position. Grover listened to the appalling outburst of battle without even a gesture of surprise, and said to an aid in his usual tranquil tone, "Tell the brigade commanders to move their men into the trenches."

I galloped back to corps head-quarters to inform General Emory of what he knew as well as I.

"Go and report to the General commanding," he replied, "that the enemy have attacked Crook's left in force."

so.

As I rode away I heard him remark, "I said I knew that if we were attacked it would be there."

prevision of my corps commander. Two days I must be permitted here to do justice to the previous to this he had visited Crook's position, and had asserted that it did not command the valley in its front, and that we could be turned from that quarter. thousand men through there," he said, "and "They can march thirty we not know it till we have them on our flank." I found General Wright, surrounded by his staff, preparing to mount.

has succeeded?" he asked, when I had delivered "Have you any knowledge how the assault my message.

failed. I infer it from the sudden cessation of "None. I can only guess. I suppose it has the firing and yelling."

Kershaw's column swept through Crook's pickIt was a bad guess. Under cover of the fog ets without responding to their scattering musketry, and took most of them prisoners. The men in the trenches, unable to see what was going on, and receiving no timely notice from the outposts, fired too late, or, caught with unloaded rifles, did not fire at all. There was a bloody struggle over the breast-works, but it did not last five minutes. Through the unmanned gaps in the lines poured the rebels in a roaring torrent; and then came a brief massacre, followed by lasting panic and disorganization. Less than a quarter of an hour of that infernal mus understood so imperfectly, changed the gallant ketry and yelling, which we heard so plainly and Army of Western Virginia-that army which had charged with such magnificent success at Winchester and Strasburg-into a mass of fugitives hurrying back upon the position of the deed, which fought with a steadiness worthy of Nineteenth Corps. There were regiments, intheir ancient reputation; but no considerable nor continuing line of resistance was established any where after the first break, and the rebel advance was only checked to re-form. No daybreak rush of moccasined savages was ever more silently, rapidly, and dextrously executed than this charge of Kershaw. The second battalion of the Fifth New York Heavy Artillery was taken on the picket line almost entire; and the resistance of the whole command was so momentary that, while it lost seven hundred prisoners, it had hardly a hundred killed and wounded.

to fight alone. The Army of Western Virginia Now came the turn of the Nineteenth Corps had temporarily disappeared as an organization, and the Sixth Corps was menaced by cavalry and light artillery, covering no one knew what force of infantry. When I reached our headwas amazed by hearing on our left-rear a lively quarters on my return from General Wright's I rattle of picket musketry. I thought of riding tant, which stopped the view in that direction; up to the misty crest, a quarter of a mile disbut no heavy firing ensued, and I concluded that it was only a trifling affair between our

outposts and some scouting party of cavalry. Had I put my first thought into execution I should have seen Gordon's column, solidly massed, coming swiftly up the slope, disdaining to reply to the pickets, and driving them with the mere weight of its advance. Here, as every where throughout the battle, the enemy knew our ground perfectly, and in consequence moved over it without wasting their time in reconnoitring or their troops in skirmishing. It was this amazing rapidity of manœuvre, this audacity which could not be foreseen nor guarded against, that beat us. To fight with any chance of success we must change our whole front; and yet we did not know it, nor had we the time to effect it. The position which Gordon was now on the point of seizing was a broad, bare hill, of which the southwestern declivity sloped gently toward the camp of the Nineteenth Corps, and commanded it. From the moment that he held it we were sure to go: ten thousand men there would easily drive out fifteen thousand here; all the more easily, of course, if they could take them, as we were taken, in reverse. The rebel force on this side, including the now not distant divisions of Ramseur and Pegram, was as strong as Emory's, and it was supported by another column, almost as numerous, coming up through || the woods on our left and along the pike in our front. The Nineteenth Corps was not only attacked in rear, but it was outnumbered. It might hold on for an hour; and so it did hold on for a hopeless, sanguinary hour, but that was all that mortals could do.

"His men have," he said, with the same hopeless smile, glancing around at the horde of retreating soldiers.

In going back to the General I rode along the line of M'Millan's Brigade, and warned such regimental commanders as I could see that their fiery trial was at hand. I had scarcely left it when another aid came up with orders for it to advance, and, breasting the current of fugitives, it pushed into the tangled wood which was soon to be its slaughter-pen. About the same time General Emory ordered two other brigades across the pike, with instructions to face toward the crest on which Gordon was beginning to show himself. The remaining three brigades of the corps continued at the breast-works. It was evident that to hold our position we needed the help of the Sixth Corps, and it was almost equally evident that it would not arrive in time.

A roar of musketry from the wood told us that M'Millan's Brigade had opened its struggle, but did not tell us how hopelessly it was overmatched, flanked on the left as it was by Ramseur, and charged in front and on the right by Kershaw. Within a space of ten minutes a sanguinary drama was enacted in that tangled thicket of trees and undergrowth. My own old regiment, the Twelfth Connecticut, fired three volleys at close quarters before it was forced into the first retreat that it ever made under the assault of an enemy. The resistance of the other regiments was similarly desperate, bloody, brief, and hopeless. In the haste of slaughter men could not reload, but fought with their General Emory had already been joined by bayonets and clubbed rifles. After the battle Generals Wright and Crook when I found him was over we found corpses here with their skulls near the breast-works. He knew consequently crushed by the blows of musket-buts, and with that a great disaster had happened, but he said their life-blood clotted around the triangular nothing of it in my hearing, and I was far from wounds made by bayonets. The opposing troops guessing it. I saw, indeed, a ceaseless flow of were so intermingled that they could not in all stragglers pouring out of the wood on our left, cases distinguish each other as enemies. "What and passing us toward the rear; but I supposed the devil are you firing this way for ?" said Lieuthat they were the cooks, etc., of Crook's com- tenant Mullen, of the Twelfth Connecticut, to a mand getting out of the range of fire, according to squad which he supposed from its position to the prudent custom of non-combatants. It seems belong to the Eighth Vermont, but which was that M'Millan's Brigade had already been push- shooting down the men of his company. ed out in that direction to arrest the progress answer was half a dozen rifle shots, fortunately of the enemy, and to enable the West Virginian ill-aimed, and an equally inefficacious summons Army to rally. Fearing that this brigade had of, "Surrender, you damned Yankee!" Lieubroken, General Emory sent me to find out who tenant-Colonel Lewis, of the same regiment, the stragglers were. As I approached the wood was saluted by cries of, "Shoot that officer!" the stream of fugitives increased in volume until followed by a scattering volley of harmless bulit was like a division in column of march, except lets. As the shattered ranks came out upon that there were no files, no ranks, no organization. the open ground they were raked by the fire of They were not breathless, not running, but they a line drawn up across the very hollow through were going to the rear in utter confusion. which they had entered the wood not twenty minutes previous. During that day the brigade lost more than one-third of its fighting men, the greater part of them on this horrible hill of sacrifice, where it offered itself up for the salvation of the army. Among those who died here was Corporal William Putnam, of Company C, Twelfth Connecticut, a lineal descendant of the revolutionary general and patriot, and a brave, noble young soldier.

"To the Eighth Corps," "To the Eighth Corps," man after man responded when I asked what command they belonged to.

"Captain, what does this mean?" I said to the first officer whom I met.

"Why, I suppose it means that we are retreating," he replied, with a bitter smile.

"What! has Crook been driven from his position ?" I exclaimed, realizing at last the all but incredible calamity.

The

Not a regimental color was lost, and the bri