office, and was demonstrating to an eager dozen the indubitable fact that the big victory would be either at Harper's Ferry or Alexandria. Young Matthew Coffin was in love, and might be seen through the hotel window writing, candles all around him, at a table, covering one pale blue sheet after another with impassioned farewells. Sergeants and corporals and men were wakeful. Some of these, too, were writing letters, sending messages; others joined in the discussion as to the theatre of war, or made knots of their own, centres of conjectures and prophecy; others roamed the streets, or down by the river bank watched the dark stream. Of these, a few proposed to strip and have a swim--who knew when they'd see the old river again? But the notion was frowned upon. One must be dressed and ready. At that very moment, perhaps, a man might be riding into town with the order. The musicians were not asleep. Young Matthew Coffin, sealing his letter some time after midnight, and coming out into the moonlight and the fragrance of the locust trees, had an inspiration. All was in readiness for the order when it should come, and who, in the meantime, wanted to do so prosaic a thing as rest? "Boys, let us serenade the ladies!" The silver night wore on. So many of the "boys" had sisters, that there were many pretty ladies staying in the town or at the two or three pleasant old houses upon its outskirts. Two o'clock, three o'clock passed, and there were yet windows to sing beneath. Old love songs floated through the soft and dreamy air; there was a sense of angelic beings in the unlit rooms above, even of the flutter of their wings. Then, at the music's dying fall, flowers were thrown; there seemed to descend a breath, a whisper, "Adieu, heroes--adored, adored heroes!" A scramble for the flowers, then out at the gate and on to the next house, and so _da capo_. Dawn, though the stars were yet shining, began to make itself felt. A coldness was in the air, a mist arose from the river, there came a sensation of arrest, of somewhere an icy finger upon the pulse of life. Maxwelton's braes are bonnie, Where early fa's the dew, And 't was there that Annie Laurie Gie'd me her promise true,-- They were singing now before an old brick house in the lower street. There were syringas in bloom in the yard. A faint light was rising in the east, the stars were fading. Gie'd me her promise true Which ne'er forgot shall be-- Suddenly, from High Street, wrapped in mist, a bugle rang out. The order--the order--the order to the front! It called again, sounding the assembly. _Fall in, men, fall in!_