"Let me hold the little girl up," ventured the milder man, and set her gently upon his shoulder, as amidst a confusion of outcries and flutter of hats and handkerchiefs the broad, dense column came on with measured tread, its stars and stripes waving in the breeze and its backward-slanting thicket of bayoneted arms glittering in the morning sun. All at once there arose from the great column, in harmony with the pealing music, the hoarse roar of the soldiers' own voices singing in time to the rhythm of their tread. And a thrill runs through the people, and they answer with mad huzzas and frantic wavings and smiles, half of wild ardor and half of wild pain; and the keen-eyed man here by Mary lets the tears roll down his cheeks unhindered as he swings his hat and cries "Hurrah! hurrah!" while on tramps the mighty column, singing from its thousand thirsty throats the song of John Brown's Body. Yea, so, soldiers of the Union,--though that little mother there weeps but does not wave, as the sharp-eyed man notes well through his tears,--yet even so, yea, all the more, go--"go marching on," saviors of the Union; your cause is just. Lo, now, since nigh twenty-five years have passed, we of the South can say it! "And yet--and yet, we cannot forget"-- and we would not. CHAPTER LII. A PASS THROUGH THE LINES. About the middle of September following the date of the foregoing incident, there occurred in a farmhouse head-quarters on the Indiana shore of the Ohio river the following conversation:-- "You say you wish me to give you a pass through the lines, ma'am. Why do you wish to go through?" "I want to join my husband in New Orleans." "Why, ma'am, you'd much better let New Orleans come through the lines. We shall have possession of it, most likely, within a month." The speaker smiled very pleasantly, for very pleasant and sweet was the young face before him, despite its lines of mental distress, and very soft and melodious the voice that proceeded from it. "Do you think so?" replied the applicant, with an unhopeful smile. "My friends have been keeping me at home for months on that idea, but the fact seems as far off now as ever. I should go straight through without stopping, if I had a pass." "Ho!" exclaimed the man, softly, with pitying amusement. "Certainly, I understand you would try to do so. But, my dear madam, you would find yourself very much mistaken. Suppose, now, we should let you through our lines. You'd be between two fires. You'd still have to get into the rebel lines. You don't know what you're undertaking." She smiled wistfully. "I'm undertaking to get to my husband."