She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose straight on from strength to strength: "Sure I must fight if I would win, Increase my courage, Lord. I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by thy word." The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so keen she could not conceal it even from him. "Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?" He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his temples. "I hate to refuse you." His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind it." Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance, told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh! how can you?" Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know, dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours." "No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing: "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?" But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third, warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom, flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in their song of songs. Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!