scalping and murders, with grotesque concomitant circumstances,--such as the terrifying ricochet effects on an unsophisticated red-man of riving a buzz-wig from the head of his victim in lieu of a real scalp, and the consequent sudden exchange of the characters of pursued and pursuer,--all of which, oddly enough, the people who stood in imminent danger of a horrible fate thought very funny indeed. One evening the commandant devised a new plan to pass the time. All were summoned to the parade ground to share in an entertainment designated as "Songs of all nations." "An' I could find it in my stommick to wish it was to share in 'Soups of all nations,'" said Corporal O'Flynn to a comrade. For it seemed that the quartermaster-sergeant had docked his rations by an ounce or two, a difference that made itself noted in so slender a dole and a convalescent's appetite. It was a night long to be remembered. The great coils of Scorpio seemed covered with scintillating scales, so brilliant were the stars. No cloud was in the sky, unless one might so call that seeming glittering vapor, the resplendent nebulose clusters of the Galaxy. A wind was moving through the upper atmosphere, for the air was fresh and cool, but below was the soft, sweet stillness of the summer night, full of fragrant odors from the woods, the sound of the swift-flowing river, the outpour of the melody of a mocking-bird that had alighted on the tip of the great flagstaff, and seemed to contribute thence his share to the songs of all nations. He caught upon his white wing and tail-feathers, as he flirted them, the clear radiance of the moon,--not a great orb, but sending forth a light fair enough to be felt in all that sidereal glitter of the cloudless sky, to show the faces of Odalie and Belinda and others less comely, as the ladies sat in chairs under the line of trees on one side of the parade with a group of officers near them, and the soldiers and "single men" and children of the settlers filling the benches of the post which were brought out for the occasion. So they all sang, beginning with a great chorus of "Rule Britannia," into which they threw more force and patriotism than melody. Then came certain solo performances, some of which were curious enough. Odalie's French chansonnettes acquired from her grand'maman, drifting out in a mellow contralto voice, and a big booming proclamation concerning the "Vaterland," by the drum-major, were the least queerly foreign. Mrs. Halsing, after much pressing, sang an outlandish, repetitious melody that was like an intricate wooden recitative, and the words were suspected of being Icelandic,--though she averred they were High Dutch, to the secret indignation of the drum-major, who, as O'Flynn afterward remarked, when discussing the details of the evening, felt himself qualified by descent to judge, his own father-in-law having been a German. The men who had sung in the Christmas carols remembered old English ditties,--