said good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he had closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished, for myself, to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.

"Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore !"

ANDRÉ'S REQUEST TO WASHINGTON.

IT is not the fear of death

That damps my brow,

It is not for another breath

I ask thee now;

I can die with a lip unstirred
And a quiet heart-

Let but this prayer be heard
Ere I depart.

I can give up my mother's look-
My sister's kiss;

I can think of love-yet brook

A death like this!

I can give up the young fame
I burned to win-

All-but the spotless name
I glory in.

Thine is the power to give,

Thine to deny,

Joy for the hour I live

Calmness to die.

By all the brave should cherish,

By my dying breath,

I ask that I may perish

By a soldier's death!

William Gilmore Simms.

BORN in Charleston, S. C., 1806. DIED there, 1870.

A WOMAN'S COURAGE.

[The Yemassee. 1835.—Revised Edition. 1853.]

THEY EY lay in waiting for the favorable moment-silent as the grave, and sleepless-ready, when the garrison should determine upon a sally, to fall upon their rear; and in the meanwhile quietly preparing dry fuel in quantity, gathering it from time to time, and piling it against the logs of the fortress, they prepared thus to fire the defences that shut them out from their prey.

There was yet another mode of finding entrance, which has been partially glimpsed at already. The scouts had done their office diligently in more than the required respects. Finding a slender pine twisted by a late storm, and scarcely sustained by a fragment of its shaft, they applied fire to the rich turpentine oozing from the wounded part of the tree, and carefully directing its fall, as it yielded to the fire, they lodged its extremest branches, as we have already seen, against the wall of the Block House and just beneath the window, the only one looking from that quarter of the fortress. Three of the bravest of their warriors were assigned for scaling this point and securing their entrance, and the attack was forborne by the rest of the band, while their present design, upon which they built greatly, was in progress.

Let us then turn to this quarter. We have already seen that the dangers of this position were duly estimated by Grayson, under the sugges tion of Granger's wife. Unhappily for its defence, the fate of the ladder prevented that due attention to the subject, at once, which had been imperatively called for; and the subsequent excitement following the discovery of the immediate proximity of the Indians had turned the consideration of the defenders to the opposite end of the building, from whence the partial attack of the enemy, as described, had come. It is true that the workmen were yet busy with the ladder; but the assault. had suspended their operations, in the impatient curiosity which such an event would necessarily induce, even in the bosom of fear.

The wife of Grayson, fully conscious of the danger, was alone sleepless in that apartment. The rest of the women, scarcely apprehensive of attack at all, and perfectly ignorant of the present condition of affairs, with all that heedlessness which marks the unreflecting character, had sunk to the repose (without an effort at watchfulness) which previous fatigues had, perhaps, made absolutely unavoidable. She, alone, sat

thoughtful and silent-musing over present prospects-perhaps of the past but still unforgetful of the difficulties and the dangers before her. With a calm temper she awaited the relief which, with the repair of the ladder, she looked for from below.

In the mean time hearing something of the alarm, together with the distant war-whoop, she had looked around her for some means of defence, in the event of any attempt being made upon the window before the aid promised could reach her. But a solitary weapon met her eye, in a long heavy hatchet, a clumsy instrument, rather more like the cleaver of a butcher than the light and slender tomahawk so familiar to the Indians. Having secured this, with the composure of that courage which had been in great part taught her by the necessities of fortune, she prepared to do without other assistance, and to forego the sentiment of dependence, which is perhaps one of the most marked characteristics of her sex. Calmly looking round upon the sleeping and defenceless crowd about her, she resumed her seat upon a low bench in a corner of the apartment, from which she had risen to secure the hatchet, and, extinguishing the only light in the room, fixed her eye upon the accessible window, while every thought of her mind prepared her for the danger which was at hand. She had not long been seated when she fancied that she heard a slight rustling of the branches of the fallen tree just beneath the window. She could not doubt her senses, and her heart swelled and throbbed with the consciousness of approaching danger. But still she was firm-her spirit grew more confirmed with the coming trial; and, coolly throwing the slippers from her feet, grasping firmly her hatchet at the same time, she softly arose, and keeping close in the shadow of the wall, she made her way to a recess, a foot or so from the entrance, to which it was evident some one was cautiously approaching along the attenuated body of the yielding pine. In a few moments and a shadow darkened the opening. She edged more closely to the point, and prepared for the intruder. She now beheld the head of the enemy-a fierce and foully painted savage—the war-tuft rising up into a ridge, something like a comb, and his face smeared with colors in a style the most ferociously grotesque. Still she could not strike, for, as he had not penetrated the window, and as its entrance was quite too small to enable her to strike with any hope of success at any distance through it, she felt that the effort would be wholly without certainty; and failure might be of the worst consequence. Though greatly excited, and struggling between doubt and determination, she readily saw what would be the error of any precipitation. But even as she mused thus apprehensively, the cunning savage laid his hand upon the sill of the window, the better to raise himself to its level. That sight tempted her in spite of her better sense to the very precipitation she had desired to avoid. In the moment that she