leaves,) was my general, whose praise I once received as I lay wounded on the field of battle. I am a Prussian, Sir, and came to this country when my father-land had no farther use for my sword. I have not been successful in my peaceful life, and misfortune after misfortune drove me here, hoping to gather about us a few of my countrymen, and make a German home; but in that I was disappointed. The severe winters chilled their resolution, and now we are by ourselves. The few neighbors about us are not of our class, but they are kind and honest; and the world has nothing to tempt me back to it. I have one brave son at sea. My two daughters you saw yesterday. We had another, but she sleeps yonder."
He turned abruptly from the room. The chaplain, left to himself, observed about the apartment various articles of refinement and faded luxury, telling the story of more prosperous days. His subsequent acquaintance with the family confirmed his first impressions. Though not of high rank, they were educated, of gentle manners, and, though for years remote from cultivated society, preserved the amenities which now distinguished them. Only the father seemed to have suffered for want of occupation, and, not unlikely, from habits formed in camp, but now doubly dangerous in seclusion.
At a signal from another room, one of the daughters led the chaplain to the bedside of the sufferer. The father sat with his face averted, near an open window, through which came the laughing prattle of a child, and a half-idiot serving-woman looked in wonderingly across the threshold of an outer kitchen. The daughters, having raised their mother's head on a higher pillow, and affectionately smoothed her thin gray hair under the snow-white cap, withdrew to the other side of the bed. The chaplain placed his broad hat, with its green veil, on the little table, and sat silent for a while, not knowing how to begin, since, as yet, nothing had given him a clue to the woman's state of mind. She lay still and stone-like; her eyes were dry, with little "speculation" in them; her lips moved, but uttered no sound; and her hand, feebly stretched out, was cold and stiff. Her whole frame was worn to extreme thinness, and the color of her skin told that the seat of her disease was the liver.
