The Preacher went through it all with a heavy heart. Those beautiful homes with their rich carpets, handsome furniture, and those long lines of beautiful carriages in the parks, made a contrast with the agony of universal ruin which he left at home that crushed his soul. He hastened to tell the story of Mrs. Gaston to a genial old merchant who had taken a great fancy to him. A tear glistened in the old man’s eye as he quickly rose. “Come right down to my store. I’ll get you a money order before the post-office closes. I’ve got tickets for you to go to the Coliseum with me to-night and hear the music!--the great Peace Jubilee. We are celebrating the return of peace and prosperity, and the preservation of the Union. It’s the greatest musical festival the world ever saw.” The Preacher was dazed with the sense of its sublimity and the pathetic tragedy of the South that lay back of its joy. The great Coliseum, constructed for the purpose, seated over forty thousand people. Such a crowd he had never seen gathered together within one building. The soul of the orator in him leaped with divine power as he glanced over the swaying ocean of human faces. There were twelve thousand trained voices in the chorus. He had dreamed of such music in Heaven when countless hosts of angels should gather around God’s throne. He had never expected to hear it on this earth. He was transported with a rapture that thrilled and lifted him above the consciousness of time and sense. They rendered the masterpieces of all the ages. The music continued hour after hour, day after day, and night after night. The grand chorus within the Coliseum was accompanied by the ringing of bells in the city, and the firing of cannon on the common, discharged in perfect time with the melody that rolled upward from those twelve thousand voices and broke against the gates of Heaven! When every voice was in full cry, and every instrument of music that man had ever devised, throbbed in harmony, and a hundred anvils were ringing a chorus of steel in perfect time, Parepa Rosa stepped forward on the great stage, and in a voice that rang its splendid note of triumph over all like the trumpet of the archangel, sang the Star Spangled Banner! Men and women fainted, and one woman died, unable to endure the strain. The Preacher turned his head away and looked out of the window. A soft wind was blowing from the South. On its wings were borne to his heart the cry of the widow and orphan, the hungry and the dying still being trampled to death by a war more terrible than the first, because it was waged against the unarmed, women and children, the wounded, the starving and the defenceless! He tried in vain to keep back the tears. Bending low, he put his face in his hands and cried like a child. “God forgive them! They know not what they do!” he moaned. The kindly old man by his side said nothing, supposing he was overcome by the grandeur of the music. CHAPTER XIX--THE RALLY OF THE CLANSMEN