As they entered it and turned to the left, Mary, with Alice again in her arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly bush. His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost position, when a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side of the highway, snatched a carbine from the earth and cried: "Halt!" The dark recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen, enveloped in their blankets, lying about a few red coals. Mary turned a frightened look backward and met the eyes of her companion. "Move a little faster," said he, in a low, clear voice. As she promptly did so she heard him answer the challenge, as his horse trotted softly after hers. "Don't stop us, my friend; we're taking a sick child to the doctor." "Halt, you hound!" the cry rang out; and as Mary glanced back three or four men were just leaping into the road. But she saw also her companion, his face suffused with an earnestness that was almost an agony, rise in his stirrups with the stoop of his shoulders all gone, and wildly cry: "Go!" She smote the horse and flew. Alice woke and screamed. "Hush, my darling," said the mother, laying on the withe; "mamma's here. Hush, darling, mamma's here. Don't be frightened, darling baby. O God, spare my child!" and away she sped. The report of a carbine rang out and went rolling away in a thousand echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp succession, and there went close by Mary's ear the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized, once,--twice,--thrice,--just at her back where the hoofs of her companion's horse were clattering--the tart rejoinders of his navy six. "Go!" he cried again. "Lay low! lay low! cover the child!" But his words were needless. With head bowed forward and form crouched over the crying, clinging child, with slackened rein and fluttering dress, and sun-bonnet and loosened hair blown back upon her shoulders, with lips compressed and silent prayers, Mary was riding for life and liberty and her husband's bedside. "O mamma, mamma," wailed the terrified little one. "Go on! Go on!" cried the voice behind; "they're--saddling up! Go! go! We're goin' to make it! We're going to make it! Go-o-o!" And they made it! FOOTNOTE: [10] From "Dr. Sevier." NYDIA, THE BLIND GIRL[11] EDWARD BULWER LYTTON As Glaucus, a young Athenian, now a resident of Pompeii, was strolling with his friend Clodius through the streets of that renowned city, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an open space where three streets met; and just where the porticoes of a light, graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl, with a flower-basket on her right arm and a small three-stringed instrument of music in her left hand, to whose low and soft tones she was modulating a low, plaintive air.