CHAPTER XVII. - PEACE.

With the fall of Atlanta I have little more to do with war.

A preceding chapter closed with the meeting between Mara Morland and her brother, whom she had supposed dead.

I need not say that it was a happy meeting.

When the first transport of her great joy had passed she, still clinging to him, as if fearful that he might be torn from her again, said: "On, Harry! you don't know how happy I am. And they said you were killed in that dreadful fight. You mast tell me how you escaped,"

" That was, indeed, a dreadful fight, dear sister, and smarting from the wrongs I had received I went into it with the determination never to come out alive!"

"Oh, Harry!"

" But It was not to be," he continued. "Though I was wounded severely, reported among the slain and left upon the field with the dead, I lived. I cannot tell you how I left the battle-field, or how I ever came within the Union lines, for the next four weeks were blank to be. I was held under slight restraint and when I began to mend I was offered a parole. They probably thought I would never be able to do duty again. Then, Mara, I did what I never thought I should have done."

" What, brother?"

" Deserted the southern cause! I don't wonder you look surprised. But all at once my eyes seemed opened to the true state of affairs. Perhaps 1 should acknowledge that what I ;had been forced to undergo made me more bitter in my decision. At any rate I refused a parole and offered my services to the northern forces. You will forgive me for this. Mara."

"l am glad you did, Harry," was her quick reply. " I—I have felt that we were in the wrong ever since poor grandfather's words, when he was dying."

"You must tell me all about that, Mara."

"As soon as you have finished your story, Harry."

"There is little more to tell. Seeing that I appeared sincere in my offer, and that I was still unable to enter the ranks, they offered me the position of engineer on the Macon road, a situation which I gladly accepted. Soon after I entered the regular service under my present commission. Out of respect to my friends and you, and grandfather in particular, I changed my name, so that I now am known as Colonel Warson."

" I am so happy I cannot talk!" she exclaimed. " But you are wounded, Harry and your arm——"

" It is nothing serious, Mara. It will soon get well. You must tell me your story now."

As Mara's adventures are well known to the reader we need not repeat them. Nor need we dwell upon the scenes that followed.

Brick Logan and Mrs. Gray were wondering listeners to their conversation.

Neither of them was taken prisoner, the first declaring that he would not return to the Confederate service, even if he were able.

Woodsville was left under the charge of Union soldiers while the army moved on to the front—on to Atlanta.

The fall of Atlanta was the crown of Sherman's efforts and his " march to the sea" was thereafter a "grand walk over."

Harry Morland at the first opportunity returned to Woodsville to find Cavalry Curt already there.

The meeting between was a happy one.

They saw little more active service. We think they had already done their duty.

The next spring, when they heard of Lee's surrender, there was great rejoicing to know that, at last, the war was ended.

Brick Logan was not heard to complain.

Mrs. Gray's sons, who were taken prisoners at Kennesaw, were exchanged, to return to their home, to their mother's unbounded joy.

When Curt returned to his northern home Harry and Mara accompanied him.

A year later the latter became the happy wife of the one-time cavalry chief.

If you want to see a happy home today visit theirs in the old Bay State.

Harry Morland lives at the old homestead near Dalton with a wife and circle of bright-eyed children.

Regularly every summer he comes north to visit Curt and Mara, while they as soon as the snows of New England begin to whiten the earth, hie to that southern home where they are ever thrice welcome.

Mrs. Gray still lives at Woodsville with one of her sons, an aged women now, with silvery hair and bowed form, but her old age is a happy one.

Brick Logan is now a wealthy manufacturer at Atlanta, one of many to whom the South owes its growing prosperity.

He, too, long since found him a wife, and when he wants a few day's vacation from business, he goes to Dalton.

The Wizard Scout! what of him? I fancy you are asking. I wish I could tell you more than I am able to do.

As we have intimated he was not seen in Georgia after the fall of Atlanta. A soldier under Grant told of such a person's being in the northern army at the surrender of Lee at Appomattox.

I cannot vouch for this, any more than I can explain the course of his career before his sudden appearance at Dalton.

It is evident, however, that he was not quite right in his mind. Probably some great wrong done him by his enemies had not only shattered his reason, but made him. an implacable foe.

Utterly devoid of fear, and possessing the gift of ventriloquism, he had performed feats little short of the marvelous.

It was he who threw the bag of cotton at Dan Mason, saving his life by hurling him from the breastworks in season to escape the fire of the foe. So the omen the latter persisted in proved unstable, for he not only came out of that fight un-scathed, but many others.

The shadow on the rock proved to have been cast by a Confederate scout standing in the moonlight on an adjacent height.

Over a score of years have passed sine the closing scenes of the war and the hatred and enmity have gone with the changes of time. Where then the soldier dug his entrenchment, the peaceful plow man tills the soil, and instead of the screeching bullet is heard the hum of the factory wheel.

Still the gray-haired veteran loves to picture those thrilling scenes of yore and his eyes kindle as in imagination he reviews once more " Sherman's last campaign." 'Tis well they should not be forgotten else the fires of patriotism wane.

THE END.