'That's three hundred more. Consider it ours, and draw at ninety days for the whole, judgment and all.' The woman had risen during this conversation, and stood with her eyes riveted on his face and mine as if her eternal destiny hung on our words. When I made the last remark she staggered toward me and fell, as if dead, at my feet. I brought water from the stream hard by, and we soon restored her to herself. Preston then lifted her from the floor, and placing her tenderly on the bench, said, taking my hand: 'She and her children are very dear to me. You can not understand how much you have done for me. Words are weak--they can not tell you. I will pay you out of the next crop. Meanwhile, I will re-draw and keep it afloat.' 'Do as you like about that. Where is your owner, Phyllis?' 'Outside, dear master. You'll know him. He's more of us poor creatures with him.' 'Come, Preston, let's see him at once--we've no time to lose--the stage will be along soon.' 'I've no heart for trading now. You manage it, my friend.' 'Well, as you say; but you'd better be with me. Come.' 'I will in a moment.' He lingered behind, and when I left the cabin was speaking in a low tone to the slave-woman. Thinking he would follow in a moment, I went in quest of the trader. THE UNION. Our rebellion is the most stupendous in history. It absorbs the attention and affects the material interests of the world. The armies engaged outnumber those of Napoleon. Death never had such a carnival, and each day consumes millions of treasure. Great is the sacrifice, but the cause is peerless and sublime. If God has placed us, as in 1776, in the van of the great contest for the rights and liberties of man; if he has again assigned us the post of danger and of suffering, it is that of unfading glory and of imperishable renown. The question with us is that of national unity and existence, and compromise is treason. To acknowledge the doctrine of secession, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved or disintegrated, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. We must fight it out to the last. If necessity requires, we can live at home, and reverses or intervention should only increase our efforts. If need be, all--_all_ who can bear arms, must take the field, and leave to those who can not, the pursuits of industry. If we count not the cost of the struggle in men or means, it is because the value of the Union can not be estimated. If martyrs from every State, and from nearly every nation of Christendom, have fallen in our defense, never, in humble faith, we trust, has any blood, since that of Calvary, been shed in a cause more holy.