“May God strike me dead this instant, if it is not true!” said Moll, sadly; for she felt for the poor girl’s, distress.

Miranda rose, her hands pressed tightly against her heart, and moved toward the door with tottering and uncertain steps, like one who suffocates and seeks fresh air.  Then her white lips were stained with purple; a red stream gushed from her mouth and dyed the vestment on her bosom; and ere Moll could reach her, she had sunk, with an agonizing sob, upon the floor.

CHAPTER XVII.

The night after the unhappy circumstance we have related, in the bar-room of a Broadway hotel, in New York city, a colonel of volunteers, moustached and uniformed, and evidently in a very unmilitary condition of unsteadiness, was entertaining a group of convivial acquaintances, with bacchanalian exercises and martian gossip.

He had already, with a month’s experience at the seat of war, culled the glories of unfought fields, and was therefore an object of admiration to his civilian friends, and of envy to several unfledged heroes, whose maiden swords had as yet only jingled on the pavement of Broadway, or flashed in the gaslight of saloons.  They were yet none the less conscious of their own importance, these embryo Napoleons, but wore their shoulder straps with a killing air, and had often, on a sunny afternoon, stood the fire of bright eyes from innumerable promenading batteries, with gallantry, to say the least.

And now they stood, like Caesars, amid clouds of smoke, and wielded their formidable goblets with the ease of veterans, though not always with a soldierly precision.  And why should they not?  Their tailors had made them heroes, every one; and they had never yet once led the van in a retreat.

“And how’s Tim?” asked one of the black-coated hangers-on upon prospective glory.

“Tim’s in hot water,” answered the colonel, elevating his chin and elbow with a gesture more suggestive of Bacchus than of Mars.

“Hot brandy and water would be more like him,” said the acknowledged wit of the party, looking gravely at the sugar in his empty glass, as if indifferent to the bursts of laughter which rewarded his appropriate sally.

“I’ll tell you about it,” said the colonel.  “Fill up, boys.  Thompson, take a fresh segar.”

Thompson took it, and the boys filled up, while the colonel flung down a specimen of Uncle Sam’s eagle with an emphasis that demonstrated what he would do for the bird when opportunity offered.

“You see, we had a party of Congressmen in camp, and were cracking some champagne bottles in the adjutant’s tent.  We considered it a military necessity to floor the legislators, you know; but one old senator was tough as a siege-gun, and wouldn’t even wink at his third bottle.  So the corks flew about like minie balls, but never a man but was too good a soldier to cry ‘hold, enough.’