dying youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of those whom
the war (now broken out, and of which no one could see the limit) might
put in need of it. The miniature, with its broken and shattered face, that
had so vainly interposed itself between its wearer and death, had been
sent to its address.

But as to the mysterious document, the written paper, that he had laid
aside without unfolding it, but with a care that betokened more interest
in it than in either gold or weapon, or even in the golden representative
of that earthly time on which he set so high a value. There was something
tremulous in his touch of it; it seemed as if he were afraid of it by the
mode in which he hid it away, and secured himself from it, as it were.

This done, the air of the room, the low-ceilinged eastern room where he
studied and thought, became too close for him, and he hastened out; for he
was full of the unshaped sense of all that had befallen, and the
perception of the great public event of a broken-out war was intermixed
with that of what he had done personally in the great struggle that was
beginning. He longed, too, to know what was the news of the battle that
had gone rolling onward along the hitherto peaceful country road,
converting everywhere (this demon of war, we mean), with one blast of its
red sulphurous breath, the peaceful husbandman to a soldier thirsting for
blood. He turned his steps, therefore, towards the village, thinking it
probable that news must have arrived either of defeat or victory, from
messengers or fliers, to cheer or sadden the old men, the women, and the
children, who alone perhaps remained there.

But Septimius did not get to the village. As he passed along by the cottage
that has been already described, Rose Garfield was standing at the door,
peering anxiously forth to know what was the issue of the conflict,--as it