[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

The days had come when the “blood-red blossom of war” bloomed upon
our fields, and the tocsin was loudly summoning her laborers to reap the
harvest which, sown by anarchy and oppression, is in the divine order of events
to be gathered into the garners of peace and widest liberty.

The stern echo of this cry had jarred discordantly upon Vaughn's bridal joy
and he had answered it with his wealth, his influence, his earnest wishes. Himself
he had withheld, for he had said he was no more his own, but Neria's.
Now, however, as devotees will give to God the heart that earth has broken,
Vaughn was ready to offer to his country the life that love had wrecked.

The next day after his decisive interview with Neria he applied for a commission
as colonel, volunteering to raise and equip the color company of a new
regiment at his own expense.

Pending the answer to this application, Vaughn busied himself in setting his
affairs in order, with the same solemn tenderness with which a man who feels
his death at hand, will care for the welfare of those he loves and must leave
behind. Heedful even of Neria's fantasy, as he deemed it, he sent for Chloe to
his study, and closely questioned her touching her nocturnal rambles; without,
however, telling her how he had heard of them.

The old negress appeared at first utterly stolid, but when pressed for the
motive to her curious pantomime with the toad, she mumbled some broken sentences
implying that she had been working a charm for the benefit of her own
health, and that to preserve its efficacy this charm must remain a secret.

The explanation seemed to Vaughn very consistent with the superstition
and secretiveness of the negro character, and he contented himself with
warning Chloe that such exposure to night air and damps was far more likely
to injure than to benefit her health, and desiring that she should in future omit
them. He further informed her that he was about to leave home for some time,
and inquired if she would prefer remaining at Bonniemeer, subject, of course, to
Mrs. Vaughn's pleasure, or be placed with Mrs. Rhee at Carrick. Whichever
home she selected, however, Vaughn decisively forbade any private communication
between the two, and sternly desired the old woman to understand that no
messages from Mrs. Rhee to Miss Vaughn were to be delivered, whatever might
be the urgency of the housekeeper's entreaties.

Chloe turned up her head, and gave Vaughn one of her wicked sidelong looks.
So forcibly did the action remind him of some ill-omened bird, some crafty
raven who had learned a secret of sin and shame, and only waits the fitting
moment to prate it in the ears that last should hear it, that he could not restrain
a smile.

“'Pears nat'ral 'nough, arter all, dat Miss 'Nita like to hab missy Franc
come see her odd times,” began she; but Vaughn, no longer smiling, raised a
finger.

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

“Hush, woman!” said he, sternly. “If you speak of what is forbidden, I
shall know that you are crazy, and send you to a mad-house.”

“Lors, mas'r, it be you dat's mad, not me,” replied the old woman, with such
simplicity that Vaughn remained uncertain whether she had understood him or
not, and after ascertaining that she preferred remaining at Bonniemeer, contented
himself with placing a considerable present in her hand, and charging
her, in a kind but authoritative manner, to remember his injunctions.

Chloe mumbled thanks; and with a promise of compliance, shuffled away,
pausing with the door in her hand to once more glance sidelong at her master,
and mutter in her own barbarous dialect some unintelligible phrase.

“I wish she had chosen to go, but I cannot turn her out, and I believe she
is harmless,” said Vaughn, as the door closed; and then, dismissing the unpleasing
subject from his mind, he turned to more important matters. The management
of his large property he continued in the hands of Jones, Brown, and
Robinson, the hereditary advisers of his house; but for a personal and confidential
adviser in any difficulty, Vaughn recommended Neria to apply to Mr. Murray,
whose talents as a business man were undeniable, and whose interest in the
concerns of his kinsman's family was not to be doubted, although occasionally
shown in a somewhat unadvised manner.

Neria acquiesced in everything, listened patiently to her husband's minute
directions and council, and opposed none of his arrangements, not even the
primary one of leaving home. Indeed, since the hour when the decisive though
involuntary expression of her distaste for his love had so wounded Vaughn's
heart, Neria had grown timid, silent, and pre-occupied; brooding, not as her
husband bitterly told himself, over the untoward fate that had bound her, past
release, to his side, but perplexing herself afresh over the yet unsolved mysteries
of love, of her own life, and of man's nature.

So the days went on, all flowers and sunshine and song of summer birds
upon the surface, while dead men's bones, and crawling worms, and cold, and
dark, lay beneath the surface. So with the great earth herself, so with many a
smaller sphere swinging in a smaller orbit, and yet indissoluble from the finely
graduated scheme of the universe. No Thalberg, no Gottschalk, no Listz can
so endlessly vary his theme as can nature, and yet the foundation of each variation
is the theme itself.

Vaughn received his commission, and was busied day after day in the city
with regimental affairs.

At home, Neria and Francia wrought silently at the great silken banner destined
to be borne by the men of Carrick, who had answered to Vaughn's
spirited appeal for their support and assistance so unanimously that the corps
d'honneur which he proposed to raise, was almost entirely composed of men
who had either grown up with him, or who had from boyhood looked upon him
as their natural leader and adviser.

So Vaughn led forth the men of Carrick, and Vaughn's wife and their wives
remained in their lonely homes.