Yet he did not like that they should leave him alone with Lamar, as
they did, going down for help. He paced to and fro, his rifle on his
shoulder, arming his heart with strength to accomplish the vengeance
of the Lord against Babylon. Yet he could not forget the murdered man
sitting there in the calm moonlight, the dead face turned towards the
North,--the dead face, whereon little Floy's tears should never fall.
The grave, unmoving eyes seemed to the boatman to turn to him with the
same awful question. "Was this well done?" they said. He thought in
eternity they would rise before him, sad, unanswered. The earth, he
fancied, lay whiter, colder,--the heaven farther off; the war, which had
become a daily business, stood suddenly before him in all its terrible
meaning. God, he thought, had met in judgment with His people. Yet he
uttered no cry of vengeance against the doomed city. With the dead face
before him, he bent his eyes to the ground, humble, uncertain,--speaking
out of the ignorance of his own weak, human soul.

"The day of the Lord is nigh," he said; "it is at hand; and who can
abide it?"




MOUNTAIN PICTURES.


II.

MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET.