with an ague fit. Only from her lips, with a moaning sound, a murmur
came:

"No, no, no! oh, no!"

"May God strike me dead this instant, if it is not true!" said Moll,
sadly; for she felt for the poor girl's, distress.

Miranda rose, her hands pressed tightly against her heart, and moved
toward the door with tottering and uncertain steps, like one who
suffocates and seeks fresh air. Then her white lips were stained with
purple; a red stream gushed from her mouth and dyed the vestment on her
bosom; and ere Moll could reach her, she had sunk, with an agonizing
sob, upon the floor.




CHAPTER XVII.


The night after the unhappy circumstance we have related, in the
bar-room of a Broadway hotel, in New York city, a colonel of volunteers,
moustached and uniformed, and evidently in a very unmilitary condition
of unsteadiness, was entertaining a group of convivial acquaintances,
with bacchanalian exercises and martian gossip.

He had already, with a month's experience at the seat of war, culled the
glories of unfought fields, and was therefore an object of admiration to
his civilian friends, and of envy to several unfledged heroes, whose