and hatreds expiring in his heart.  The surgeon supported the expiring victor’s head, while Chaplain Colquhoun knelt beside him, holding his hand and praying audibly.  Of a sudden the petition ceased, both bent hastily toward the wounded man, and after what seemed a long time exchanged whispers.  Then the Chaplain rose, came slowly toward the now advancing group of officers, his hands outspread toward heaven in an attitude of benediction, and tears running down his haggard white face.

“I trust, dear friends,” he said, in a tremulous voice, “that all is well with our brother and commander.  His last words were, ’God is with us.’”

“Oh! but, man, that isn’t well,” broke out Gahogan, in a groan.  “What did ye pray for his soul for?  Why didn’t ye pray for his loife?”

Fitz Hugh turned his horse and rode silently away.  The next day he was seen journeying rearward by the side of an ambulance, within which lay what seemed a strangely delicate boy, insensible, and, one would say, mortally ill.

WHO WAS SHE?
-------------
BY BAYARD TAYLOR

James Bayard Taylor (born at Kennett Square, Pa., in 1825; died in 1878) was probably in his day the best American example of the all-round literary craftsman.  He was poet, novelist, journalist, writer of books of travel, translator, and, in general, magazine writer.  Says Albert H. Smith in the volume on Taylor in the “American Men of Letters” series:  “He was a man of talent, and master of the mechanics of his craft.  On all sides he touched the life of his time.”  Henry A. Beers, in his “Initial Studies in American Letters,” says that in his short stories, as in his novels, “Taylor’s pictorial skill is greater, on the whole, than his power of creating characters or inventing plots.”  In the present selection, however, he has both conceived an original type of character in the mysterious heroine, and invented an ingenious situation, if not plot, and so, in one instance at least, has achieved a short story classic.

WHO WAS SHE? 
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
[Footnote:  Reprinted by permission.  From “The Atlantic Monthly” for
September, 1874.]

Come, now, there may as well be an end of this!  Every time I meet your eyes squarely, I detect the question just slipping out of them.  If you had spoken it, or even boldly looked it; if you had shown in your motions the least sign of a fussy or fidgety concern on my account; if this were not the evening of my birthday, and you the only friend who remembered it; if confession were not good for the soul, though harder than sin to some people, of whom I am one—­well, if all reasons were not at this instant converged into a focus, and burning me rather violently, in that region where the seat of emotion is supposed to lie, I should keep my trouble to myself.  Yes, I have fifty times had it on my mind to tell you the whole story.  But who can be certain that his best friend will not smile—­or, what is worse,