“I must go.  Hal must stay here; Louis cannot go.  John will see to every thing for me, and I am going.”

Six days later he had enlisted, and oh! how filled these days were!  When Matthias heard of it, he came over, and happening to meet me where he could talk freely, he said: 

“Dis is jes’ what I knowed was a comin’, an’ I have tole Ben fur to kill dat Mas’r Sumner, de fus’ ting, for he’s the one dat ort fur to be killed.”

“Why, Matthias, you are in a great hurry to kill him, and you really believe he is to drop right into that terrible fire; why, I could not hurry a dog out of existence if I thought everlasting torment awaited him.”

“Look a yere, Miss Em’ly, ef dat dog wuz mad, you’d kill him mighty quick, wouldn’t ye?”

I did not know what to say, and he answered the question himself: 

“Yas, de Lord knows, dat man needs tendin’ to, an I’se mighty anxious fur de good Lord to take him in han’.  We’ll live to see ebery black man free, Miss Em’ly,—­we shall, shure,—­an’ dere’ll be high times down in Charleston.  Wonder what little Molly’ll do?”

“I have been thinking about her,” I said.  “You know the last letter we received they were fearful of war, and thinking of coming to her husband’s friends in Pennsylvania; but she feared her mother would die; she has been poorly for a long time.”

“Reckin she’ll die, then, fur de ’sitement’ll kill her, ef nuffin else don’t.”

The days wore on and Clara still lingered with us.  Ben was as yet unhurt, and first lieutenant of his company.  He wrote us that battle was not what he had thought it; he was not shaky at all, and the smell of powder covered every fear; he had only one thought and that was to do his duty.  A letter full of sorrow came from Mary.  Her mother had passed from earth, and her father was going on to a little farm they owned a few miles from the city, and she, with her husband and Althea Emily was, trying to get into Pennsylvania.  “I am in momentary fear,” she wrote, “for my husband is watched so closely, his principles are so well known, I think we shall have great trouble in getting through, but we cannot stay here.”

The dewy breath of May was rising about us; violet angle was alive with its blossoms, and the birds sang sweetly as if there were no sorrowing hearts in the land.

Clara had failed of late, and the evening of the fifteenth we were gathered together at her request in her sitting-room.

“Do not feel troubled,” she said, “for when I am out of sight, you will sorrow if you feel I have not told it all.  Come, baby Emily, sweet bird sit close to mam Cla, while she tells the story.”

Louis and I sat on either side, Aunt Hildy with mother and father very near, so that we formed a semi-circle.