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A Ride for a Bride

No W HEN the story of bloodshed at Bunker Hill reached Bohemia Hall, in Cecil County, Maryland, Albert De Courcy left his brother Ernest to support the dignity of the house and make patriotic speeches, while he went to the front, conscious that Helen Carmichael, his afficanced wife, was watching, in pride and sadness, the departure of his company. Letters came and went, as they always do, until rumor came of a sore defeat to the colonials at Long Island; then the letters ceased.

It was a year later when a ragged soldier, who had stopped at the hall for supper, told of Albert's heroism in covering the retreat of Washington. The gallant young officer had been shot, he said, as he attempted to swim the morasses of Gowanus. But this soldier was in error. Albert had been vexatiously bogged on the edge of the creek. While floundering in the mud a half-dozen sturdy red-coats had lugged him out and he was packed off to the prison-ships anchored in the Wallabout. In these dread hulks, amid darkness and miasma, living on scant, unwholesome food, compelled to see his comrades die by dozens every day and to be flung ashore Lights and Shadows of the South where the tide lapped away the sand thrown over them, De Courcy wished that death instead of capture had been his lot, for, next to his love, he prized his liberty.

One day he was told off, with a handful of others, for transfer to a stockade on the Delaware, and how his heart beat when he learned that the new prison was within twenty miles of home! His flow of spirits returned, and his new jailors liked him for his frankness and laughed at his honest expletives against the king. He had the liberty of the inclosure, and was not long in finding where the wall was low, the ditch narrow, and the abatis decayedknowledge that came useful to him sooner than he expected, for one day a captured horse was led in that made straight for him with a whinny and rubbed his nose against his breast. "Why!" he cried, "it's Cecil! My horse, gentlemen-or, was. Not a better hunter in Maryland!" "Yes," answered one of the officers. "We've just taken him from your brother. He's been stirring trouble with his speeches and has got to be quieted. But we'll have him to-day, for he's to be married, and a scouting party is on the road to nab him at the altar." " Married ! My brother ! What ! Ernest, the lawyer, the orator? Ho, ho! Ah, but its rather hard to break off a match in that style!" "Hard for him, may be; but they say the lady feels no great love for him. He made it seem like a duty to her, after her lover died." "How's that? Her own-what's her name?" "Helen-Helen Carmichael, or something like that."