A Novelette.

“Sing me the old song!”

The words rang out clear and bell-like upon the mellow September air, and coquetted with the autumnal zephyrs that ruffled the cerulean bosom of the mighty lake. It was night. The moon rolled proudly through the azure heavens, bathing the landscape in a shimmer of silvery sheen, and tipping the dark waters of Chicago River with a wavy, tremulous light. The nightingale throbbed his melodious plaints upon the hushed air; the crickets chirped tunefully in the hedge; and every thing afar and near bespoke the poetry of that sweet time dedicate to slumber and repose.

“Sing me the old song!”

There was a pleading querulousness in the tones that betokened William Bross’s anguish and heartache. The words were wrung from a soul in which pride and anger and sorrow battled for the ascendency. William Bross was the prototype of manly beauty. But now his supple limbs quivered with agony; his brave bosom heaved with tumultuous emotions; his ambrosial locks, brushed back by the hand of despair from his high white forehead, revealed features strikingly handsome, but, oh! so cruelly marked by the ravages of mental woe. What great grief was it that gnawed like a canker-worm at the vitals of this good and 255valorous young man? what secret anguish preyed upon his pure, clean white soul, that ever and anon he stretched forth his pale, quivering hands, and cried, in tones that would have melted an adamantine heart, “Sing me the old song”?

The imperious beauty, Joseph Medill, was not indifferent to the charms of the handsome and chivalric knight kneeling there. Between the two the tenderest sentiments had existed for many years, and ’twere vain to imagine that any passing zephyr of doubt or discontent could rend apart two hearts that for so long a time had throbbed in unison. Joseph Medill’s thoughts went back to the happy hours, the tender conferences, the mutual vows, the sweet obligations, the endearing scenes, the blissful episodes, of the past; and his beautiful bosom heaved, and his large, liquid, fathomless eyes filled with tears, and his ripe red lips quivered, as he momentarily pondered upon that pathetic panorama, and then gazed upon the limp and pleading object at his feet.

“Sing me the old song!”

Yes, Joseph Medill had not forgot that song,—the dear old song William Bross had taught him to sing when years ago they had wandered hand in hand through the primeval forests and tangled jungles where now a teeming, busy city stands. It was the song that Joseph Medill had sung through all the years of his existence since first he met the knightly William Bross, and learned of 256him that wondrous melody: it was the same sweet song, which, speeding from Joseph Medill’s tuneful lips, had spread like a subtile perfume afar and wide, had wooed every human ear, and awakened a response in every human breast.

But now for weary weeks that song had been hushed. A chilling, icy cloud had come between Joseph Medill and William Bross. Half regretfully, yet firmly, Joseph had plucked from his soul the cadences of that harmonious strain, and refused to sweep his waxen, taper fingers across the golden strings of his dulcet lyre. For weary weeks William had brooded o’er his sorrow: for dismal days had he nursed in bitter silence his grewsome grief and unavailing anguish. But, tortured to desperation, he had come at last to implore a reconciliation, and the mercy of that sweet song again.

“What song mean you?” inquired the imperious Joseph Medill, bestowing upon the kneeling William a look of melting tenderness that bespoke a relenting mood.

“What song? What other song but that which you, and you alone, have sung so pathetically and so divinely all these years?”

The imperious Joseph turned his beautiful face away, as if to conceal the emotion that perturbed his delicately chiselled features.

In another moment, William Bross had sprung to his feet, had clasped Joseph Medill in his arms, and was straining him to his breast.

257“Sing me the old song,” he whispered hotly in Joseph’s shell-like ear, “the old, sweet song about free trade.”