The Ancient City

Her voice ceased, and looking up, I saw that she had turned her face to the wall, and was silently weeping.

In the evening I begged her to come with me to the Sunday-school festival. “It will do you good to see the children, and hear them sing,” I said.

She went passively; she had regained her composure, and moved about, pale and calm.

The church stood on the Plaza; it was small, but beautiful and complete, with chancel and memorial windows of stained glass. Flowers adorned it, intertwined with the soft cloudy gray moss, a profusion of blossoms which could not be equaled in any Northern church, because of its very carelessness. Not the least impressive incident, at least to Northern eyes, was the fact that the ranks of the children singing, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” were headed by an officer in the United States uniform, the colonel commanding the post, who was also the superintendent of the Sunday-school. And when, in reading his report, the superintendent bowed his head in acknowledgment of the rector’s cordial aid and sympathy, those who knew that the rector had been himself a soldier all through those four long years, and fighting, too, on the other side, felt their hearts stirred within them to see the two now meeting as Christian soldiers, bound together in love for Christ’s kingdom, while around them, bearing flower-crowned banners, stood children both from the North and from the South, to whom the late war was as much a thing of the dead past as the Revolution of seventy-six.

As we came out of the church the rising moon was shining over Anastasia Island, lighting up the inlet with a golden path.

“Let us go up once more to the old fort,” whispered Sara, keeping me in the deep shadow of the trees as John Hoffman passed by, evidently seeking us.

“Alone?”

“Yes; there are two of us, and it will be quite safe, for the whole town is abroad in the moonlight. Do content me, Martha. I want to stand once more on that far point of the glacis under my look-out tower. That tower is my fate, you know. Come; it will be the last time.”

We walked up the sea-wall and out on to the glacis, with the light-house flashing and fading opposite; the look-out tower rose high and dark against the sky. Feeling wearied, I sat down and leaned my head against one of the old cannon; but Sara went out to the far point, and gazed up at the look-out.

“My fate!” she murmured; “my fate!”

A quick step sounded on the stone; from the other side, leaping over the wall, came John Hoffman; he did not see me as I sat in the shadow, but went out on to the point where the solitary figure stood looking up at the ruined tower.

“Sara,” he said, taking her hand, “shall we go back to ten years ago?”

And Fate, in the person of the old watch-tower, let a star shine out through her ruined windows as a token that all was well.

Vol. L. – No. 296 – 13