"This is my grandfather," the young girl said, still on her knees by the pallet, and evidencing in her calm and childlike tone no surprise at the request, and no agitation in relating what must have pained her so terribly under the circumstances. "His name is Chester Hobart. We belong to a good family, and they say that we are related to the English Earls of Buckinghamshire. My father was Charles Hampden Hobart. He was an officer in the navy, and was drowned when I was quite a little girl." Crawford did not notice, then, but remembered afterwards, that in this strange relation she said nothing of another parent who seemed likewise to be dead--her _mother_. "My grandfather and myself lived in the house, here. We had black servants, but they have all gone away. We did not have any negro quarter--the servants lived in one part of the house. My grandfather has been very ill--so ill that I thought he would die. He is very fond of the Union--_I_ do not know anything about politics. He was better a little; but the house took fire awhile ago, and I could scarcely help him out. I got out the straw mattress and a sheet, and I could get out nothing more. I am afraid my poor grandfather is very ill, now; perhaps he is dying. I thought he was dying a little while ago, and I screamed--I could not help it. That is all, grandfather, is it not? oh, grandfather! grandfather!" and the poor girl, for the first time broken down, fell forward on the straw pallet, buried her face near the old man's head, and sobbed like an overtasked child. "Poor girl!" said John Crawford. He did not mean to speak aloud, but he did so, and the dying man heard him. "Young man," he said, "you took an oath just now. Will you take another, to make an old man die happier?" "I will!" answered the young man, bending close to him. He was too much exhausted, now, to raise his head any more. "You say that the Union troops have won the fight to-day?" "I do say so. We have repulsed the rebel attacks every time; and the last repulse was a rout. They are defeated." "You believe that you can reach the Union camp in safety?" "I have no doubt of it," answered the Zouave. "Then swear to me, with the same uplifted hand you used awhile ago, that you will remove my granddaughter, Marion Hobart, to the North--out of this den of secession. She has money in a Bank in New York, enough to make her comfortable--I put it there three years ago, thinking such a time as this might come. Swear to me that you will find her a home with some honest family, and that you will neither do harm to her yourself nor permit it to approach her if you can shelter her from it. Swear it by the Ever-Living God." "I swear!" said the young soldier, lifting his hand solemnly.