The three blood red stars were now blotted out of the reconstruction calendar; like the painted dolphins in the circus at Antioch, they had been taken down one by one. The old Colonel had been running flank and flank with the athletes of reconstruction, but within the last stadium he had lost, and the old man, like the fire scathed oak, was yielding his life after all; dying like a gladiator with his wounds upon his breast; dying, yet holding fast to the traditions of his fathers, with no blemish upon their name or his; with no bar sinister upon the family shield; with no stain upon his sword. Dying a Seymour, a soldier, a southron of the bluest blood; dying with the prophecy upon his lips, "The old South, by the help of God, shall be crowned with all the blessings of civilization, with the last and highest attainments in the manhood and womanhood of her people," Dying with another prophecy upon his lips, scarcely audible, "My daughter, you will live to see the old South, now reeling and tottering like a bewildered traveller, come to her own again; like a magnanimous queen, reigning in love and tranquility; her soil yielding its harvest in bounty, and her people blessed in basket and store." CHAPTER XXV. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. Afflictive dispensations had so often heaped up against the horizon of Alice's affections, frowning, angry clouds; the memory of bier and pall had so cruelly overlaid her young life with its gloom that but for the solace of religion, there would be no refuge from the bitterness of her grief; from the shadows of the grave. But in her mother's chamber, with her mother's precious Bible in her hands, she felt that there was a fountain opened up before her, yes in the very house of David. "Blessed Book! What is life without thee?" she exclaimed. "Is it not a faithful transcript of the last will of our Redeemer? Is it not the key that unlocks the door of Heaven? Yea the guide that elaborates its beauties? 'Eye hath not seen; ear hath not heard; neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of those things which He hath prepared for them that love Him.'" She felt that in the world's tragedy of sin it was indeed a savor of life unto life; that it erects in the human soul, where there is sin, sorrow and despair, a sanitarium; rendering good for evil, giving back pardon for injury; preferring pity to vengeance; kneeling always upon the heights of virtue to uplift the broken-hearted. Whether its blessed truths be spoken in prophecy or narrative; whether whispered from the sepulchre or the crypt; whether thundered from Sinai or Mars Hill; they tenderly lead poor, fallen human nature into the portals of immortality, into the very gate of Heaven. "Has not religion," she asked, "given to humanity an uplifted brow? Has it not admonished man to put away from him every mercenary calculation and to realize that the scourges of sin are rotting whip cords? Ah yes,