There was a halt in the front ranks, and while they stand there thus, let us look once more upon these those whom we have known. Just where the good-humored faces of the Irish regiment, and the tall caps of the Highlanders are perceptible, the 13th appears in view, our company marching decorously on, no lagging, no faltering, no cowards there, though almost every heart had in it some thought of home and the dear ones left behind. Prayers were said by lips unused to pray, and who shall tell how many records of sins forgiven were that morning written in heaven? Bibles, too, were pressed to throbbing hearts, and to none more closely than to George Graham’s broad chest. He had prayed that morning in the clear moonlight, and by the same moonlight he had tried to read a line in Annie’s well-worn Bible, opening to where God promises to care for the widow and the fatherless. Was it ominous, that passage? Did it mean that he, so strong, so vigorous, so full of life, should bite the dust ere many hours were done? He could not believe it. He was too full of hope for that. He could not die with Annie at home alone, so he buttoned her Bible over his heart, and prayed that if a bullet struck him it might be there, fondly hoping that would break its force. There was a shadow on his handsome face, and it communicated itself to Isaac Simms, who was glancing so stealthily at him, and guessing of what he was thinking. Isaac, too, had prayed in the moonlight, and he, too, had thought, “What if I should be killed!” wondering if his mother ever would forget her soldier boy, even though she might not weep over his nameless grave. This to Isaac was the hardest thought of all. The boy that would not tell a lie for the sake of promotion, was not afraid to die, but he preferred that it should not be there ‘mid piles of bloody slain. He would rather death should come to him up in the humble attic, where he had lain so oft and listened to the patter of the rain on the roof above, or feigned to be asleep when his mother stole noiselessly across the threshold to see if he were covered from the cold and shielded from the snow, which sometimes found an entrance through a crevice in the wall. ’Tis strange when we are in danger what flights our fancy often takes, gathering up the minutest details of our past life, and spreading them out before us with startling distinctness. So Isaac, with possible death in advance, thought of his past life; of every object connected with his home, from the grass-plat in the rear, where his mother bleached her clothes in spring, to the blue and white checked blanket hung round his attic bed to protect him from the winter storm. That widow, so stern, so harsh, so sharp to almost every one, had been the tenderest of parents to him, and a tear glistened on the cheek of the fair-haired boy as he remembered the only time he ever was hateful to her. He had asked her forgiveness for it, and she surely would not