For not having been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, perhaps, to receive any communication from home, he advanced with a cheerful haste, not knowing that his only daughter then lay dead in his friend's house, and that it was for her funeral that the people were collecting in the green square at the end of the street.

He was so pale, broken, and decrepit that few knew him.

But there was one old neighbor who recognized him and was kind enough to lead him into a quiet place, and there tell him that he had arrived just too late to see his darling daughter alive.

The shock, instead of prostrating the old soldier, seemed to nerve him afresh and put new vigor into his limbs.

He proceeded, almost on a run, to Poindexter's house, and arrived just as the funeral cortege was issuing from the door.