But once the ring of rapid hoofs Came sudden in the night, And on the Blue Ridge summits flashed The camp-fire's baleful light. Young Nick was in the saddle, With half the valley men, To find that old man's fighting sons Who kept the ferry glen. And like the golden ore that grew To his divining rod, The shining, armed soldiery Swarmed o'er the clover sod; O'er Crampton's gap the columns fought, And by Antietam fords, Till all the world, Nick Hammer thought, At Funkstown had drawn swords. VII. Together, as in quiet days Before the battle's roar, Nick Hammer and his one-legg'd son Smoked by the tavern door. The dead who slept on Sharpsburg Heights Were not more still than they; They leaned together like the hills, But nothing had to say; Save once, as at his wooden stump The young man looked awhile, And damned the man who made that war-- He saw Nick Hammer smile. "My little boy," the old man said, "Think long as I have thunk-- You'll find this war rests on the head Of that 'air Mister Funk!" JUDGE WHALEY'S DEMON. In the little town of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they could not be happy separated, nor congenial together. A destiny seemed to unite them, but with it also a baleful memory. The negroes whispered that in the boy's conception and birth was a secret of shame; he was not this father's son, and his mother had confessed it. That mother was gone--fled to a distant part of the world with her betrayer--and the divorce was recorded while yet young Perry Whaley was a babe. But the boy never knew it: his origin reposed in the sensitive memory of his father only, and every day the father looked at the son long and distantly, and the son at the father with a most affectionate longing. "Papa," he would say, "can't you try to love me? Do I disobey you? I am sure I am always unhappy out of your sight." The father could not do without that boy, but could only hate him. "My son," he would reply, "you are obedient, but a demon! I could not love you if I would!" "Never mind then, father, I can wait. There is plenty of time in life to make you love me!"