Nervously he tore open the dead man’s shirt.  On the bared breast was a curiously shaped mole.

The sailor sank on his knees in prayer beside the body for a moment.  Then he turned, and addressing an officer who, with a file of soldiers, had come upon the scene, and was directing the removal of the dead, he asked in broken English, pointing to the corpse: 

“Will you give me this?”

“Why?”

“He was my brother—­Leon Sangrado.”

The war had found a victim in him who had caused it.

[3] Fiction, October 31, 1881.

WHY THOMAS WAS DISCHARGED.[4]

BY GEORGE ARNOLD.

Brant Beach is a long promontory of rock and sand, jutting out at an acute angle from a barren portion of the coast.  Its farthest extremity is marked by a pile of many-colored, wave-washed boulders; its junction with the mainland is the site of the Brant House, a watering-place of excellent repute.

The attractions of this spot are not numerous.  There is surf-bathing all along the outer side of the beach, and good swimming on the inner.  The fishing is fair; and in still weather yachting is rather a favorite amusement.  Further than this there is little to be said, save that the hotel is conducted upon liberal principles, and the society generally select.

But to the lover of nature—­and who has the courage to avow himself aught else?—­the sea-shore can never be monotonous.  The swirl and sweep of ever-shifting waters, the flying mist of foam breaking away into a gray and ghostly distance down the beach, the eternal drone of ocean, mingling itself with one’s talk by day and with the light dance-music in the parlors by night—­all these are active sources of a passive pleasure.  And to lie at length upon the tawny sand, watching, through half-closed eyes, the heaving waves, that mount against a dark blue sky wherein great silvery masses of cloud float idly on, whiter than the sunlit sails that fade and grow and fade along the horizon, while some fair damsel sits close by, reading ancient ballads of a simple metre, or older legends of love and romance—­tell me, my eater of the fashionable lotos, is not this a diversion well worth your having?

There is an air of easy sociality among the guests at the Brant House, a disposition on the part of all to contribute to the general amusement, that makes a summer sojourn on the beach far more agreeable than in certain larger, more frequented watering-places, where one is always in danger of discovering that the gentlemanly person with whom he has been fraternizing is a faro-dealer, or that the lady who has half-fascinated him is Anonyma herself.  Still, some consider the Brant rather slow, and many good folk were a trifle surprised when Mr. Edwin Salsbury and Mr. Charles Burnham arrived by the late stage from Wikhasset Station, with trunks enough for two first-class belles, and a most unexceptionable man-servant in gray livery, in charge of two beautiful setter-dogs.