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desperate thing. I took a vow to see you, darling. I planned to do my duty in the fight, to do it well and bravely and not to spare myself; then, if God spared my life, and I felt in my heart that he would-I planned to steal away and run the six miles that lay between us; just to come to you, to look at you, and hold you in my arms, and kiss you, and beg you to keep up for my sake, for me who loves you so, that if anything should happen that I should lose you, I would not care to live, Mary, not a day or hour."

He spoke with desperately-restrained passion; but a faint gesture of dissent from her stopped the words. She had motioned feebly towards the child, though her eyes never wandered from his face.

"No, Mary, not even for her sake. You are all my life to me, God must not take you from me!" He fell on his knees beside her, and the agony, long repressed, came from his lips in passionate, beseeching words: "God has brought us together, He must not part us again. Oh, Mary, Mary! do not leave me. I will nurse you, care for you, stay beside you always, until you are well again. My love, my" His voice died away, frozen by the look in her face. An unearthly change was coming over it, an unearthly smile of tenderness and pity looked from her eyes. With her last breath she held out her arms to him, whispering, "Poor Jim"-then fell back, dead.

He knelt beside her like a figure cut in stone, watching the cold, white marble of her face, and he seemed no more to move or breathe or be possessed of life than she, lying dead before him.

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A sound of voices outside; the snow crunched under hurrying feet; a rude hand upon the latch, and a crowd of men burst into the room. They stopped suddenly, as their eyes met the sight within, and fell back one upon another. At last one man advanced timidly from among his comrades, and touched with a hesitating hand the stony figure kneeling by the bed. It rose and turned toward him.

"Good God! Jim, what's come to you, man, to make you look like that?" and a hoarse murmur came from all as they saw the havoc made in one short night in the brave young face. The first man spoke again:

"Jim, old comrade, what did you do it for? You know the punishment, man, and you know there is no escape. You must have been mad to run through the snow and leave your footprints, clear as a sign-board, pointing the way you went." He paused for some response, but receiving none from the motionless figure, he went on sadly:

"There was talk of your brave conduct on the field, and the colonel sent for you; and then they found that you were missing and others beside you. When the colonel heard it he fell into a great rage and swore you should be retaken, and the others also, and made examples, and before daybreak parties were ordered out in search of you; and Jim, poor fellow, it was a straight road that led us here. It's the saddest morning's work I've ever done, but we have our orders and you must come along with us."

Then, with sudden hope, another friendly voice said :

"Comrade, it may not be so desperate after all. When the colonel hears the story we've got to tell of how we found you, and when he knows how well you fought only yesterday, I think he will pardon you, Jim; I think he'll not let the sentence be death."

At last a sign of life from the man before them. Had he just awakened to the meaning of the words they spoke? A strange gleam, almost of joy, passed across his face. He answered nothing, but turned and bent over the still figure on the bed, and spoke to it, low and gladly. They caught a few words, indistinctly. They saw him gently kiss the cold lips. Then he rose and advanced toward the group, leaning on their guns. At this moment a baby's plaintive cry struck on their ears. One of the men went and lifted the infant tenderly in his arms, but the father took no notice; his face was again a face of stone.

They marched out of the house, a silent, awe-stricken band, with sorrow in all their hearts. The doomed man walked in their midst, and his heart was torn by a great agony which made him dead to all the world around him.

It was all in vain. The colonel was much moved by the story they told him and by his respect for the grief of so brave a man, but there could be no mitigation of the sentence. "In time of war there is nothing which can excuse the deserter, and there is no punishment for him but death."

These were his words, and the time was fixed for the execution of the sentence. Unnerved and shaken, a few of his comrades went to take their last leave of Jim. They found him unchanged; he heard them without emotion; when one of them promised to take the baby and care for it as his own, a faint look of gratitude came into his eyes, just for a moment. He shook hands with them all and they left him, much distressed.

At sunset he was led out and shot. Twenty bullets pierced his body. When they took the bandage from his eyes, they wondered at the look of joy on his dead face.

They buried them together-Jim and Mary. It was all they could do for him, and as they filled in the earth above the rude coffins, many stern eyes shed tears over the deserter's dishonored grave.

THE AUTHOR OF "MY MARYLAND."
BY EUGENE L. DIDIER.

N the nineteenth of April, 1861, the first blood of the Civil War was
shed in the streets of Baltimore. Early on the morning of that
day news reached the city that several regiments of Federal troops

were to pass through on their way to the invasion of Virginia. A sudden uprising of the Southern sympathizers resulted in a fight between the soldiers and the citizens, in which five of the former and twelve of the latter were killed. When this startling news was flashed through the country, it reached a young Marylander, who was a professor in Poydras College, at Pointe Coupee, in the distant State of Louisiana. This young Marylander was James R. Randall. His heart was fired, and after a sleepless and feverish night, he arose and wrote "My Maryland." The poem was sent to the New Orleans Delta, at that time one of the leading newspapers of the South. It was soon published, and James R. Randall, like Lord Byron, "awoke one morning and found himself famous." "My Maryland" became the favorite war song of the South. Under its inspiring influence thousands of young men rushed forward to die. It roused the "chivalry" of Maryland-a people ever open to "the intoxication of sweet sound "-and added 10,000 soldiers to the Confederate army. Milton received five pounds for "Paradise Lost," Poe received ten dollars for "The Raven," but Randall did not receive one cent for "My Maryland."

The Favorite War Song of the South.

With the other Southern youths, young Randall rushed headlong into the war, and showed a practical as well as poetical interest in the Southern cause. After the first battle of Manassas, when Beauregard's army was expected to march on Washington, the Maryland secessionists were said to be taking active measures for joining the Southern Confederacy. An extra session of the Legislature was called, and, as a majority of its members were secessionists, it was generally believed that they intended to precipitate the State into the Rebellion. When Randall heard this, he wrote his second war song, "There's Life in the Old Land Yet." But the "life in the old land" was soon quenched by the arrest and imprisonment of the secession members of the Maryland Legislature, after which "My Maryland" and other Southern songs were suppressed.

When Pelham, the wonderful boy cannoneer, was killed in an inglorious night skirmish, fighting as a cavalryman, Randall's muse was once more inspired, and he sang an "In Memoriam" of the "Young Marcellus," full of beauty and pathos. "Arlington" finished our poet's quartette of Southern songs. I quote the following verse from "My Maryland," as a specimen of this spirited lyric:

Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!

My mother State, to thee I kneel,
Maryland!

For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,

And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,

Maryland! My Maryland!

The story of how the poem was set to music and adopted as a Southern war-song, forms a romantic and interesting incident of the Civil War. The music at first chosen was Frederic Berat's "Ma Normadie," but that was soon "swept away," to use Mr. Randall's own language, when the lovely German lyric, "Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum," was selected as a more

A Romantic Incident of the Civil War

spirited air. Shortly after the battle of Manassas, General Beauregard invited several Maryland ladies, who were living in Virginia, to visit his headquarters, near Fairfax Court House. The ladies and their escorts encamped the first night at Manassas, where they were serenaded by the famous Washington Artillery, of New Orleans. The boys in gray, at the close of the serenade, called for a song from the ladies, and Miss Jennie Cary, standing at the door of the tent, sang "My Maryland." The refrain was quickly caught up by the soldiers, and the camp rang with the words, "Maryland, my Maryland." As the last notes died away, the wild Confederate yell was given, with "three cheers and a tiger for Maryland." A spectator of the scene relates that there was not a dry eye in the ladies' tent and not a cap with a rim on it in camp. This is how "My Maryland" came to be adopted as a national war-song of the South.

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AFTER MANY YEARS.

BY A UNION VETERAN.

N the spring of 1864, I was a member of an organization attached to General Kautz's division of cavalry, and participated in his great Southside raid.

On the afternoon of May 7, we reached Stony Creek, Sussex County. Va., situated on the Petersburg Railroad, about twenty miles south of Petersburg city. We found the place fortified and quite strongly garrisoned, but after a sharp little fight which lasted about an hour, succeeded in routing the enemy and capturing the place.

Fifteen years later, business called me to Virginia, and on the afternoon of December 14, 1879, I stepped from a train at Stony Creek, and set out on foot for Parham's store, distant five miles, my destination. I took the road leading eastward, as directed by the station agent, and half a mile on my way came to where it forked, and here halted, being puzzled as to which was the route for me to follow. In my dilemma I looked about and discovered a horse and cart approaching from the direction of the station, the same being driven by a white man. Accordingly I waited for him, in order to inquire my way. As he drew near I perceived that the horse was old and lean, the cart rickety and dilapidated, and the driver, a man apparently about thirty-eight years of age, thin and poorly clad. A thick matted beard of light red color covered his entire face. Altogether, the whole outfit was about the worst I had ever seen. The cart, covered with small particles of cotton, showed plainly that hauling that commodity was the work to which it was then being put.

"Stranger, can you inform me which road leads to Parham's store?" I asked of the driver, as he drew near.

"This one to the right," he replied, driving by me, and turning into the same himself.

I followed along behind the cart for about a minute, when the driver, accosting me, said:

"Say, pard, I go a right smart ways on the road to Parham's myself, and if you are not afraid of getting cotton all over your clothes, you may jump in and ride with me."

As much for the sake of having company as for the benefit to be derived from the ride, I accepted his invitation and sprang into the cart, taking a

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