inevitable retreat, little thinking that these were indeed the last life-throbs of our dying cause. There was one from our own circle, whose story is but a representative one of the many thousand such that now darken what was once the Sunny South. He had joined the army in the beginning of the war, and his wife and children had fled from their pleasant home near New-Berne, on its first occupation by the Federal forces, leaving the negroes, plantation, house, furniture, and all to the invaders. They had taken refuge at Chapel Hill among old friends; and in a poor and inconvenient home, those who had counted their wealth by thousands were glad of a temporary shelter, as was the case with hundreds of families from the east, scattered all over the central part of the State. The energetic wife laid aside the habits of a lifetime and went to work, while her brave husband was in the army. From New-Berne to Richmond, from Charleston to the Blackwater, we, who had known him from boyhood, traced his gallant career, sharing his wife's triumphs in his successes, and her fears in his perils. Her health in unaccustomed toils began to fail, but we looked forward hopefully to the time when she might return to her beautiful home on the sea-shore, where a blander air would restore her. So we read his loving, cheerful letters, and believed that the life which had been spared through so many battles would yet be guarded for the sake of the wife and the curly-haired little ones. On the twenty-second of March, riding unguardedly near a thicket, our friend received the fire of a squad of sharp-shooters concealed there. He fell from his horse and was carried to a place of safety, where he lay on the muddy ground of the trampled battle-field for a few hours, murmuring faintly at intervals, "My wife! my poor wife!" till death mercifully came. He was wrapped by his faithful servant in his blood-stained uniform and muddy blankets as he lay; a coarse box was procured with great difficulty, and so the soldier was brought back to his family. His last visit home had been just before the fall of Fort Fisher; and when the news of the attack came, though his furlough was not out by ten days, yet he left at once for Wilmington, saying, "It was every man's duty to be at the front." He had returned to us now, "off duty forever." Loving hands laid him slowly and sadly down to a soldier's honored rest, while his little children stood around the grave. The wife made an effort to live for these children. She bore up through that woful spring and summer, and the thin, white, trembling hands were ever at work. But the brown hair turned gray rapidly, the easy-chair was relinquished for the bed, and before winter came the five children were left alone in the world. The wife had joined her husband. The ample estate that should have been theirs was gone. Strangers were in their home by the sea, and had divided out their lands; nor is it yet known whether they will be