How long he read is uncertain. But from moment to moment his tones would call me back from visions, and I would vaguely hear that one was gone who had warned his fellows against the pitfalls of political jealousy, and bade all who loved their country band against those who would seek to pluck a laurel from the wreath of our glorious confederacy.
But under visions I had made my resolve. Douglas was dead, but others were living.
Two months before in a gray dawn, the walls of a fort in Charleston Harbor had crumbled under fire from a score of rebel batteries. Now the shots echoed in my ears with a new volume.
"Good luck, Solon—and good-by—I'm going 'on to Richmond.'"
"Oh, that!" said he, easily, "that will be over before you can get to the front."
But I went, forthwith, and, triumphant lover though he was, the editor of the Little Arcady Argus was less than a prophet.
I went to the "little" war; and of her I carried, as I marched, an ambrotype in a closed case, which I had obtained deviously. She smiled in it, a little questioning, inciting smile, that seemed to lurk back in her eyes rather than along her lips. It was the smile that had availed to keep me firm in my vows of silence.
It was another picture I brought back five years later—the picture of a young girl, not smiling but grave, even fearful, as if she had faced the camera
