The ceremony over, the concourse adjourned to a large frame building, part shed, part cotton-house, ordinarily used for storing the staple plant of South Carolina, before ginning and pressing. The Colonel had sent his year's crop to Charleston, and the vacant space was now occupied by a triple row of tables, set out with plates, knives and forks, and drinking utensils. Here, the newly married couples being inducted into the uppermost seats, as places of honor, and the rest of the company accommodated as well as could be effected, a substantial dinner was served, and partaken of with a gusto and appreciation only conceivable in those to whom such an indulgence is exceptional, coming, like the occasion, but once in a year. Upward of a hundred and fifty persons sat down to it, exclusive of those temporarily detailed as waiters, who presently found leisure to minister to their own appetites. Their owner surveyed the scene with an air of gratification, in which I could not detect a trace of his recent serious discomposure. I am well persuaded, however, that he had not forgotten it, as that the cause of it was known among the negroes; I thought I observed evidences of it in their looks and deportment, even amid the general hilarity. The ladies had returned to the house, and we were about following them, when the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard without, and the officious voices of the negroes announced the arrival of a visitor or messenger for the Colonel, who stepped forward to meet him. A young man, clad in a coarse homespun gray uniform, scantily trimmed with red worsted, and a French military cap, alighted, and addressed our friend in a faltering, hesitating manner, as though communicating some disastrous intelligence. I saw the Colonel turn pale, and put his hand to his head as if he had received a stunning blow. Instinctively the three of us rushed toward him. 'My God! what's the matter? what has happened, ----?' inquired the clergyman. 'Philip! Philip! my boy's dead--shot himself by accident!' was the answer. A very few words explained all, The young volunteer had fallen a victim to one of those common instances of carelessness in playing with loaded firearms. While frolicking with a comrade, at his barracks, he had taken up his revolver, jestingly threatening to shoot. The other, grasping the barrel of the cocked pistol, in turning it round, had caused its discharge, the bullet penetrating the breast of the unfortunate owner of the weapon. Conveyed to the hospital, he had died within an hour after his arrival. * * * * * Our holiday-making, of course, came to a sudden termination. Next day I accompanied the Colonel to Charleston, to claim the body of his deceased son, and not long afterward parted with him, on my return to the North. FOOTNOTES: