Now comes the singular part of my story.  In a few weeks from the time of their sailing, we heard that old Bill and his wife had safely landed at Hatteras Inlet, and rented a small house on one of the beaches there, with the intention of opening a kind of tavern; but no sooner were they fairly settled in their new abode than old Bill was found one morning dead in his bed, with evident signs of having met with foul play; though what kind of death these indications pointed at was very uncertain.

The closest and shrewdest investigation failed to attach a well-grounded suspicion to any one.  Poor Bill was dead—­and nothing more was ever known.  Singular enough, the conduct of his widow was such as to entirely avert even from her enemies hints of complicity in the crime,—­if crime there was,—­though none doubted that there had been a murder, and that murder in a few attendant circumstances seemed to indicate female aid.  Shortly after this catastrophe, Madame Rose made ‘a vendue’ of her deceased husband’s gun and apparel, packed up her own worldly goods, and vanished, to be heard of no more.

And so our shore lost its best ’soundser’—­a man of mark in his way, great of frame and heart, and one long to be recalled in our humble annals of wrecking and of sport.  He was one of those vigorous out-croppings of sturdy Northern physique recalling in minute detail the stories told of those giant children, the Vikings and Goths of the fighting ages, and which the blood, though as healthy as ever,—­witness the glorious exploits of our soldiers even as I write,—­produces less frequently in these days of culture.  Such as I have described was the character of Bill the Soundser, and such was literally and truly his mysterious death.

* * * * *

COLUMBIA TO BRITANNIA.

VIA SHAKSPEARE.

                  Thou cold-blooded slave,
  Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side? 
  Been sworn my soldier? bidding me depend
  Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength? 
  And dost thou now fall over to my foes,
  And wear a lion’s hide?  Doff it for shame,
  And hang a calf’s skin on those recreant limbs.

KING JOHN, III. 1.

* * * * *

GENERAL LYON.

To-day all the Northland shouts for joy, flashes its announcements of victory along myriad leagues of wire, hurls them from grim cannon mouths out over broad bays till the seas tremble with sympathy, huzzas in the streets, flames in bonfires, would even clash the clouds together and streak the heavens with lightning—­and for what?  The flag waves again in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and the cause is safe! The cause—­have we all learned what that means, brother Americans?  Something broader than mere Union, the pass-word of so many thousands to suffering and death, something more than the freedom of the press and the ballot-box.