"Promise me, darling!" The great gray eyes looked up innocently into the pleading blue ones, and Carrie, in her queer, childish way, answered, Certainly, Roland; I'll do anything on earth for you!" "Kiss me now as a pledge!" and he placed his bright red lips to hers. Two little arms went up and twined about his neck; a pair of scarlet lips met his fearlessly and frankly, while the boy pressed a real lover's kiss upon the child's lips. This was the betrothal of their childhood.

A DREAM OF MAIDENHOOD.

Good-bye, my darling, good-bye; you will not forget Cousin Roland while he is away?" No answer. The girl sat upon the door-step, her face buried in her hands. "T was the gray dawn of a chilly April morning, and a heavy dampness filled the air, and cast a gloom and nameless sadness over awakening nature.

Seating himself by the drooping figure, Roland placed one arm tenderly about the slender waist, and, with the other hand, lifted the bowed head. “Look up, darling!" But when she did look up, the despair and misery written upon her face startled him. The eyes were heavy with unshed tears, and the sweet mouth quivered convulsively, while the cheeks seemed to have lost their bloom forever. With a low exclamation of astonishment, he caught the small form to his breast and pressed kiss after kiss upon the cold lips. "Carrie, Carrie! speak to me! 'T will not be for long — only a year — and then Cousin Roland will come back to you." "A year! Oh, Roland! how can I let you go? dear, dear Roland!" And the little arms clung convulsively to the loved form. "Only one year, and my Carrie will be through school and be quite a young lady. I have but one fear- that she will forget poor Cousin Roland while he is in the far West, making himself a name. But, darling, I have only time to bid you good-bye, as the train will soon be here." He stood up as he spoke, and tenderly raised the girl from her lowly seat.

Both arms were placed lovingly, caressingly about her, and one last, long kiss pressed upon the quivering lips. He was gone. With her small hands clasped over the wildly beating heart, and her eyes, those deep windows of her soul, gazing, oh! so mournfully, after the retreating form, the girl, with her first great sorrow, leaned faint and trembling against the balustrade, and prayed fervently, entreatingly, in her wild, impulsive way, that God would protect the idol of her young heart.

THE BETROTHAL.

Summer, with bright flowers and glowing heats, moonlight nights and dewy mornings; winter, with bitter winds and biting frosts, shuddering rains

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and heavy snows, had come and gone, until three times had the old peartree at the garden-gate borne its crown of golden bells; three times had the Christmas-tree been made in the cosy parlor, and each time a beautiful gift hung thereon for the absent one: and yet Cousin Roland, the loved, the neverforgotten, absented himself from the loving hearts of that little household band. One heart had hoped and prayed, and yet hoped on. One pair of lips had syllabled those daily, hourly prayers which had birth in the heart. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and ofttimes the body. 'Twas such a June sunset as had flooded the earth ten years before, when Roland had won the child's promise to be his little wife. The child was now a woman, a weak, suffering woman, and her pallid face rivalled the snowy pillow upon which the aching head reclined. Roland! Roland! will you never come?" The thin hands were clasped, the feeble lips murmured words of entreaty: "O my Father, send him to me ere I die! To look upon his face, to hear the sound of his loved voice, would bring life and health to this languishing spirit. Roland! Roland! save me! I would not die! Not yet; oh, not yet!" Loving hearts and willing hands ministered to the sufferer, but the one cry of her heart could not be stilled. "Raise me higher; I pray you let me see the dying day, and the birth of the summer moon and stars.”

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The billowy clouds were heaped in the west; the golden arrows faded one by one; the dusk of twilight veiled the earth, and by and by the pure, silver light of the moon stole over the earth, wrapping shrub, tree, and flower in a misty veil of lambent light. A deep hush brooded over the sleeping earth, and Carrie begged to be left alone with the night and deep silence.

The click of the gate-latch broke the stillness. A firm, quick tread came up the neat white walk, and a tall, manly form stepped upon the piazza and leaned for a moment against the vine-wreathed column. The sufferer's breath came thick and fast; the weak fingers laced and interlaced themselves convulsively. "Roland! Roland!" But for one moment the form stood thus; for that cry, feeble as it was, reached the heart, if not the ears of the strong man, and, with swift steps, he reached the window and sprang into the room.

No words were spoken- none were needed; and the curious moon, looking in at the window, saw a man holding closely to his breast the white-robed figure of a woman—a woman who smiled through her tears—that was all. They had renewed their betrothal.

SHATTERED HOPES.

"There, fasten that spray of orange-buds to the veil with this pearl pin: how exquisite ! Carrie, those great gray eyes are full of splendor this morning!" and the merry bridesmaid stepped back to admire her work. A tiny form, robed in purest white, a soft, fleecy white; a wreath of orange-buds

graced the dark silky bands of hair; and the veil, a perfect web from the looms of fairy-land, fell in misty folds to the hem of the robe.

'T was an autumn morning—a beautiful morning, replete with all the soft hazy splendors of the Indian summer, and on this day Carrie and Roland were to be made one.

"Break the news gently—do not agitate her; tell her he is necessarily detained; anything but the truth!" Those words came to the bride and her attendants as they awaited Roland's coming, in the pretty south chamber with its bridal adornings. A white, ghostly face looked out from the door, and a voice, from which the musical ring had departed forever, exclaimed, "Let me know the worst! Tell, oh, tell me! take me to him!" Loving arms were placed about her, and kind voices, with smothered anguish in their tones, endeavored to soften the dreadful tidings.

"He is injured, my darling - seriously hurt by the train. In his eagerness to reach you this morning, he sprang from the car while it was still movingand - " "But where, oh! where is Roland? Take me to my darling!" How could they refuse that pleading cry?

The crowd of sorrowing friends, with their tear-stained faces, drew away from the bedside as the pale, trembling form of the bride approached, supported by the arms of the loving grandmother. "Roland! Roland!" and, as in their childhood days, two little arms were twined about the cold, still form, and a pair of cold lips were pressed wildly, lovingly, upon lips yet colder.

'Open those blue eyes, my love, my darling! You must not die! Roland! Roland!" No answer; no parting of the long silken lashes; no glance from those love-beaming, bewildering eyes; no smile from those beautiful lips.

"Hush! he sleeps!" And with one little hand beneath the regal head, and the other stroking the dark, glossy beard, Carrie sat watching the sleep of her beloved. Yes, he slept in calm and quiet; slept to wake on earth no

more !

"And still she lived! her heart beat on:

A beating, but a broken heart!"

THE PRESENT.

"And I have lived! and still I live

To learn from every troubled breath

That I have suffered, and survive

A something worse than human death."

Here, in the lonely and loveless Present, I feel that it would be mockery for me to wish for joys and happiness such as are willed to others, and form

a part and parcel of them. I have lived my life, brief though it was, and melancholy the close. I do not live; I only exist. A form, it is true, goes the accustomed rounds of duty; a voice, cold, unfaltering, speaks when necessity demands; a pale, motionless face, with dead, gray eyes, bends over any necessary form of labor; but the heart is dead and buried in the grave of my first, my only love-Roland! Roland!

"No other light has lighted up my heaven,

No second moon has ever shone for me;

All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,

All my life's hopes sleep in the grave with thee."

MRS. BESSIE W. WILLIAMS.

AMONG the Southern writers, there are many who never published

a line until the disastrous state of affairs consequent upon the close of the war found them compelled to earn a living; and the pen, a delight in happier and prosperous days, was chosen by many as a means of livelihood. Articles written for the pleasure and amusement of a limited circle now saw light, that otherwise would never have been printed.

Mrs. Bessie W. Williams ("Constance") has not published a great deal, but in what she has published, in "Scott's Magazine" and "The Mobile Sunday Times," we think we see germs of great promise for future excellence. She may be now a "half-fledged birdling, but her wings will soon be sufficiently grown, and she will fly high."

Her real, breathing, moving life has been so full of stirring events, so made up of deepest sorrows and sweetest joys, that not until recently has she felt she could quietly sit down and write her thoughts.

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Mrs. Williams is a native of the town of Beaufort, State of South Carolina. She is the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson, of 'Hampton's Legion," who nobly yielded up his life on the field of the "First Manassas." The three names, Bee, Bartow, Johnson, were among the first which became immortal in the Confederate struggle for independence. Her husband was Henry S. Williams, of Marietta, Georgia, where she now resides. At the youthful age of twenty-one, Mrs. Williams was a widow. If it were possible for her to devote her time to reading and studying, we think, candidly, that as a writer she would take a high place among the literati of our country.

The following extract is from the concluding chapter of " Ciaromski and his Daughter," published in the "Mobile Sunday Times."

AFTER THE BATTLE.

Oh! what words can describe, what language can depict the horrors of a battle-field? Fearful it is when the booming of the cannon, the clash of