"Pa, you've been in battle?"

"Yes," he said.

"And you weren't hurt; I thank God for that," she whispered. After a while: "Is Uncle Silas dying?"

"Yes, Jinny; Dr. Polk is in there now, and says that he can't last through the night. Silas has been asking for you, honey, over and over. He says you were very good to him,—that you and Mrs. Brice gave up everything to nurse him."

"She did," Virginia faltered. "She was here night and day until her son came home. She is a noble woman—"

"Her son?" repeated the Colonel. "Stephen Brice? Silas has done nothing the last half-hour but call his name. He says he must see the boy before he dies. Polk says he is not strong enough to come."

"Oh, no, he is not strong enough," cried Virginia. The Colonel looked down at her queerly. "Where is Clarence?" he asked.

She had not thought of Clarence. She turned hurriedly, glanced around the room, and then peered down the dark stairway.

"Why, he came in with me. I wonder why he did not follow me up?"

"Virginia."

"Yes, Pa."

"Virginia, are you happy?"

"Why, yes, Pa."

"Are you going to marry Clarence?" he asked.

"I have promised," she said simply.

Then after a long pause, seeing her father said nothing, she added, "Perhaps he was waiting for you to see me alone. I will go down to see if he is in the carriage."

The Colonel started with her, but she pulled him back in alarm.

"You will be seen, Pa," she cried. "How can you be so reckless?"

He stayed at the top of the passage, holding open the door that she might have light. When she reached the sidewalk, there was Ned standing beside the horses, and the carriage empty.

"Ned!"

"Yass'm, Miss Jinny."

"Where's Mr. Clarence?"

"He done gone, Miss Tinny."

"Gone?"

"Yass'm. Fust I seed was a man plump out'n Willums's, Miss Jinny. He was a-gwine shufflin' up de street when Marse Clarence put out after him, pos' has'e. Den he run."

She stood for a moment on the pavement in thought, and paused on the stairs again, wondering whether it were best to tell her father. Perhaps Clarence had seen—she caught her breath at the thought and pushed open the door.

"Oh, Pa, do you think you are safe here?" she cried. "Why, yes, honey, I reckon so," he answered. "Where's Clarence?"

"Ned says he ran after a man who was hiding in an entrance. Pa, I am afraid they are watching the place."

"I don't think so, Jinny. I came here with Polk, in his buggy, after dark."

Virginia, listening, heard footsteps on the stairs, and seized her father's sleeve.

"Think of the risk you are running, Pa," she whispered. She would have dragged him to the closet. But it was too late. The door opened, and Mr. Brinsmade entered, and with him a lady veiled.

At sight of Mr. Carvel Mr. Brinsmade started back in surprise. How long he stared at his old friend Virginia could not say. It seemed to her an eternity. But Mrs. Brice has often told since how straight the Colonel stood, his fine head thrown back, as he returned the glance. Then Mr. Brinsmade came forward, with his hand outstretched.

"Comyn," said he, his voice breaking a little, "I have known you these many years as a man of unstained honor. You are safe with me. I ask no questions. God will judge whether I have done my duty."

Mr. Carvel took his friend's hand. "Thank you, Calvin," he said. "I give you my word of honor as a gentleman that I came into this city for no other reason than to see my daughter. And hearing that my old friend was dying, I could not resist the temptation, sir—"

Mr. Brinsmade finished for him. And his voice shook.

"To come to his bedside. How many men do you think would risk their lives so, Mrs. Brice?"

"Not many, indeed, Mr. Brinsmade," she answered. "Thank God he will now die happy. I know it has been much on his mind."

The Colonel bowed over her hand.

"And in his name, madam,—in the name of my oldest and best friend,—I thank you for what you have done for him. I trust that you will allow me to add that I have learned from my daughter to respect and admire you. I hope that your son is doing well."

"He is, thank you, Colonel Carvel. If he but knew that the Judge were dying, I could not have kept him at home. Dr. Polk says that he must not leave the house, or undergo any excitement."

Just then the door of the inner room opened, and Dr. Polk came out. He bowed gravely to Mrs. Brice and Mr. Brinsmade, and he patted Virginia.

"The Judge is still asleep," he said gently. "And—he may not wake up in this world."

Silently, sadly, they went together into that little room where so much of Judge Whipple's life had been spent. How little it was! And how completely they filled it,—these five people and the big Rothfield covered with the black cloth. Virginia pressed her father's arm as they leaned against it, and brushed her eyes. The Doctor turned the wick of the night-lamp.

What was that upon the sleeper's face from which they drew back? A smile? Yes, and a light. The divine light which is shed upon those who have lived for others, who have denied themselves the lusts of the flesh, For a long space, perhaps an hour, they stayed, silent save for a low word now and again from the Doctor as he felt the Judge's heart. Tableaux from the past floated before Virginia's eyes. Of the old days, of the happy days in Locust Street, of the Judge quarrelling with her father, and she and Captain Lige smiling nearby. And she remembered how sometimes when the controversy was finished the Judge would rub his nose and say:

"It's my turn now, Lige."

Whereupon the Captain would open the piano, and she would play the hymn that he liked best. It was "Lead, Kindly Light."

What was it in Silas Whipple's nature that courted the pain of memories? What pleasure could it have been all through his illness to look upon this silent and cruel reminder of days gone by forever? She had heard that Stephen Brice had been with the Judge when he had bid it in. She wondered that he had allowed it, for they said that he was the only one who had ever been known to break the Judge's will. Virginia's eyes rested on Margaret Brice, who was seated at the head of the bed, smoothing the pillows The strength of Stephen's features were in hers, but not the ruggedness. Her features were large, indeed, yet stanch and softened. The widow, as if feeling Virginia's look upon her, glanced up from the Judge's face and smiled at her. The girl colored with pleasure, and again at the thought which she had had of the likeness between mother and son.

Still the Judge slept on, while they watched. And at length the thought of Clarence crossed Virginia's mind.

Why had he not returned? Perhaps he was in the office without. Whispering to her father, she stole out on tiptoe. The office was empty. Descending to the street, she was unable to gain any news of Clarence from Ned, who was becoming alarmed likewise.

Perplexed and troubled, she climbed the stairs again. No sound came from the Judge's room Perhaps Clarence would be back at any moment. Perhaps her father was in danger. She sat down to think,—her elbows on the desk in front of her, her chin in her hand, her eyes at the level of a line of books which stood on end.—Chitty's Pleadings, Blackstone, Greenleaf on Evidence. Absently; as a person whose mind is in trouble, she reached out and took one of them down and opened it. Across the flyleaf, in a high and bold hand, was written the name, Stephen Atterbury Brice.

It was his desk! She was sitting in his chair!

She dropped the book, and, rising abruptly, crossed quickly to the other side of the room. Then she turned, hesitatingly, and went back. This was his desk—his chair, in which he had worked so faithfully for the man who lay dying beyond the door. For him whom they all loved—whose last hours they were were to soothe. Wars and schisms may part our bodies, but stronger ties unite our souls. Through Silas Whipple, through his mother, Virginia knew that she was woven of one piece with Stephen Brice. In a thousand ways she was reminded, lest she drive it from her belief. She might marry another, and that would not matter.

She sank again into his chair, and gave herself over to the thoughts crowding in her heart. How the threads of his life ran next to hers, and crossed and recrossed them. The slave auction, her dance with him, the Fair, the meeting at Mr. Brinsmade's gate,—she knew them all. Her love and admiration for his mother. Her dreams of him—for she did dream of him. And now he had saved Clarence's life that she might marry her cousin. Was it true that she would marry Clarence? That seemed to her only a dream. It had never seemed real. Again she glanced at the signature in the book, as if fascinated by the very strength of it. She turned over a few pages of the book, "Supposing the defendant's counsel essays to prove by means of—" that was his writing again, a marginal, note. There were marginal notes on every page—even the last was covered with them, And then at the end, "First reading, February, 1858. Second reading, July, 1858. Bought with some of money obtained by first article for M. D." That capacity for work, incomparable gift, was what she had always coveted the most. Again she rested her elbows on the desk and her chin on her hands, and sighed unconsciously.

She had not heard the step on the stair. She had not seen the door open. She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his voice, and then she thought that she was dreaming.

"Miss Carvel!"

"Yes?" Her head did not move. He took a step toward her.

"Miss Carvel!"

Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her eyes, —unbelief and wonder and fright. No; it could not be he. But when she met the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she trembled, and our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting quivered and became a blur.

He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him. She herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person exhaled. It seemed to have come upon him suddenly. He needed not to have spoken for her to have felt that. What it was she could not tell. She knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of the chair as though material support might sustain her.

"Is he—dead?"

She was breathing hard.

"No," she said. "Not—not yet, They are waiting for the end."

"And you?" he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the Judge's room.

Then she remembered Clarence.

"I am waiting for my cousin," she said.

Even as she spoke she was with this man again at the Brinsmade gate. Those had been her very words! Intuition told her that he, too, was thinking of that time. Now he had found her at his desk, and, as if that were not humiliation enough, with one of his books taken down and laid open at his signature. Suffused, she groped for words to carry her on.

"I am waiting for Clarence, Mr. Brice. He was here, and is gone somewhere."

He did not seem to take account of the speech. And his silence—goad to indiscretion—pressed her to add:— "You saved him, Mr. Brice. I—we all —thank you so much. And that is not all I want to say. It is a poor enough acknowledgment of what you did,—for we have not always treated you well." Her voice faltered almost to faintness, as he raised his hand in pained protest. But she continued: "I shall regard it as a debt I can never repay. It is not likely that in my life to come I can ever help you, but I shall pray for that opportunity."

He interrupted her.

"I did nothing, Miss Carvel, nothing that the most unfeeling man in our army would not do. Nothing that I would not have done for the merest stranger."

"You saved him for me," she said.

O fateful words that spoke of themselves! She turned away from him for very shame, and yet she heard him saying:— "Yes, I saved him for you."

His voice was in the very note of the sadness which has the strength to suffer, to put aside the thought of self. A note to which her soul responded with anguish when she turned to him with the natural cry of woman.

"Oh, you ought not to have come here to-night. Why did you come? The Doctor forbade it. The consequences may kill you."

"It does not matter much," he answered. "The Judge was dying."

"How did you know?"

"I guessed it,—because my mother had left me."

"Oh, you ought not to have come!" she said again.

"The Judge has been my benefactor," he answered quietly. I could walk, and it was my duty to come."

"You did not walk!" she gasped.

He smiled, "I had no carriage," he said.

With the instinct of her sex she seized the chair and placed it under him. "You must sit down at once," she cried.

"But I am not tired," he replied.

"Oh, you must sit down, you must, Captain Brice." He started at the title, which came so prettily from her lips, "Won't you please!" she said pleadingly.

He sat down. And, as the sun peeps out of a troubled sky, she smiled.

"It is your chair," she said.

He glanced at the book, and the bit of sky was crimson. But still he said nothing.

"It is your book," she stammered. "I did not know that it was yours when I took it down. I—I was looking at it while I was waiting for Clarence."

"It is dry reading," he remarked, which was not what he wished to say.

"And yet—"

"Yes?"

"And yet you have read it twice." The confession had slipped to her lips.

She was sitting on the edge of his desk, looking down at him. Still he did not look at her. All the will that was left him averted his head. And the seal of honor was upon his speech. And he wondered if man were ever more tempted.

Then the evil spread its wings, and soared away into the night. And the moment was past. Peace seemed to come upon them both, quieting the tumult in their hearts, and giving them back their reason. Respect like wise came to the girl,—respect that was akin to awe. It was he who spoke first.

"My mother has me how faithfully you nursed the Judge, Miss Carvel. It was a very noble thing to do."

"Not noble at all," she replied hastily, "your mother did the most of it, And he is an old friend of my father—"

"It was none the less noble," said Stephen, warmly, "And he quarrelled with Colonel Carvel."

"My father quarrelled with him," she corrected. "It was well that I should make some atonement. And yet mine was no atonement, I love Judge Whipple. It was a—a privilege to see your mother every day—oh, how he would talk of you! I think he loves you better than any one on this earth."

"Tell me about him," said Stephen, gently.

Virginia told him, and into the narrative she threw the whole of her pent-up self. How patient the Judge had been, and the joy he had derived from Stephen's letters. "You were very good to write to him so often," she said. It seemed like a dream to Stephen, like one of the many dreams of her, the mystery of which was of the inner life beyond our ken. He could not recall a time when she had not been rebellious, antagonistic. And now—as he listened to her voice, with its exquisite low tones and modulations, as he sat there in this sacred intimacy, perchance to be the last in his life, he became dazed. His eyes, softened, with supreme eloquence cried out that she, was his, forever and forever. The magnetic force which God uses to tie the worlds together was pulling him to her. And yet the Puritan resisted.

Then the door swung open, and Clarence Colfax, out of breath, ran into the room. He stopped short when he saw them, his hand fell to his sides, and his words died on his lips. Virginia did not stir.

It was Stephen who rose to meet him, and with her eyes the girl followed his motions. The broad and loosely built frame of the Northerner, his shoulders slightly stooping, contrasted with Clarence's slighter figure, erect, compact, springy. The Southerner's eye, for that moment, was flint struck with the spark from the steel. Stephen's face, thinned by illness, was grave. The eyes kindly, yet penetrating. For an instant they stood thus regarding each other, neither offering a hand. It was Stephen who spoke first, and if there was a trace of emotion in his voice, one who was listening intently failed to mark it.

"I am glad to see that you have recovered, Colonel Colfax," he said.

"I should indeed be without gratitude if I did not thank Captain Brice for my life," answered Clarence. Virginia flushed. She had detected the undue accent on her cousin's last words, and she glanced apprehensively at Stephen. His forceful reply surprised them both.

"Miss Carvel has already thanked me sufficiently, sir," he said. "I am happy to have been able to have done you a good turn, and at the same time to have served her so well. It was she who saved your life. It is to her your thanks are chiefly due. I believe that I am not going too far, Colonel Colfax," he added, "when I congratulate you both."

Before her cousin could recover, Virginia slid down from the desk and had come between them. How her eyes shone and her lip trembled as she gazed at him, Stephen has never forgotten. What a woman she was as she took her cousin's arm and made him a curtsey.

"What you have done may seem a light thing to you, Captain Brice," she said. "That is apt to be the way with those who have big hearts. You have put upon Colonel Colfax, and upon me, a life's obligation."

When she began to speak, Clarence raised his head. As he glanced, incredulous, from her to Stephen, his look gradually softened, and when she had finished, his manner had become again frank, boyish, impetuous —nay, penitent. He seized Stephen's hand.

"Forgive me, Brice," he cried. "Forgive me. I should have known better. I—I did you an injustice, and you, Virginia. I was a fool—a scoundrel." Stephen shook his head.

"No, you were neither," he said. Then upon his face came the smile of one who has the strength to renounce, all that is dearest to him—that smile of the unselfish, sweetest of all. It brought tears to Virginia. She was to see it once again, upon the features of one who bore a cross, —Abraham Lincoln. Clarence looked, and then he turned away toward the door to the stairway, as one who walks blindly, in a sorrow.

His hand was on the knob when Virginia seemed to awake. She flew after him:

"Wait!" she whispered.

Then she raised her eyes, slowly, to Stephen, who was standing motionless beside his chair.

"Captain Brice!"

"Yes," he answered.

"My father is in the Judge's room," she said.

"Your father!" he exclaimed. "I thought—"

"That he was an officer in the Confederate Army. So he is." Her head went up as she spoke.

Stephen stared at her, troubled. Suddenly her manner, changed. She took a step toward him, appealingly.

"Oh, he is not a spy," she cried. "He has given Mr Brinsmade his word that he came here for no other purpose than to see me. Then he heard that the Judge was dying—"

"He has given his word to Mr. Brinsmade?

"Yes."

"Then," said Stephen, "what Mr. Brinsmade sanctions is not for me to question."

She gave him yet another look, a fleeting one which he did not see. Then she softly opened the door and passed into the room of the dying man. Stephen followed her. As for Clarence, he stood for a space staring after them. Then he went noiselessly down the stairs into the street.



CHAPTER XI

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

When the Judge opened his eyes for the last time in this world, they fell first upon the face of his old friend, Colonel Carvel. Twice he tried to speak his name, and twice he failed. The third time he said it faintly.

"Comyn!"

"Yes, Silas."

"Comyn, what are you doing here?

"I reckon I came to see you, Silas," answered the Colonel.

"To see me die," said the Judge, grimly.

Colonel Carvel's face twitched, and the silence in that little room seemed to throb.

"Comyn," said the Judge again, "I heard that you had gone South to fight against your country. I see you here. Can it be that you have at last returned in your allegiances to the flag for which your forefathers died?"

Poor Colonel Carvel

"I am still of the same mind, Silas," he said.

The Judge turned his face away, his thin lips moving as in prayer. But they knew that he was not praying, "Silas," said Mr. Carvel, "we were friends for twenty years. Let us be friends again, before—"

"Before I die," the Judge interrupted, "I am ready to die. Yes, I am ready. I have had a hard life, Comyn, and few friends. It was my fault. I—I did not know how to make them. Yet no man ever valued those few more than! But," he cried, the stern fire unquenched to the last, "I would that God had spared me to see this Rebellion stamped out. For it will be stamped out." To those watching, his eyes seemed fixed on a distant point, and the light of prophecy was in them. "I would that God had spared me to see this Union supreme once more. Yes, it will be supreme. A high destiny is reserved for this nation—! I think the highest of all on this earth." Amid profound silence he leaned back on the pillows from which he had risen, his breath coming fast. None dared look at the neighbor beside them.

It was Stephen's mother who spoke. "Would you not like to see a clergyman, Judge?" she asked.

The look on his face softened as he turned to her.

"No, madam," he answered; "you are clergyman enough for me. You are near enough to God—there is no one in this room who is not worthy to stand in the presence of death. Yet I wish that a clergyman were here, that he might listen to one thing I have to say. When I was a boy I worked my way down the river to New York, to see the city. I met a bishop there. He said to me, 'Sit down, my son, I want to talk to you. I know your father in Albany. You are Senator Whipple's son.' I said to him, 'No, sir, I am not Senator Whipple's son. I am no relation of his.' If the bishop had wished to talk to me after that, Mrs. Brice, he might have made my life a little easier—a little sweeter. I know that they are not all like that. But it was by just such things that I was embittered when I was a boy." He stopped, and when he spoke again, it was more slowly, more gently, than any of them had heard him speak in all his life before. "I wish that some of the blessings which I am leaving now had come to me then—when I was a boy. I might have done my little share in making the world a brighter place to live in, as all of you have done. Yes, as all of you are now doing for me. I am leaving the world with a better opinion of it than I ever held in life. God hid the sun from me when I was a little child. Margaret Brice," he said, "if I had had such a mother as you, I would have been softened then. I thank God that He sent you when He did."

The widow bowed her head, and a tear fell upon his pillow.

"I have done nothing," she murmured, "nothing."

"So shall they answer at the last whom He has chosen," said the Judge. "I was sick, and ye visited me. He has promised to remember those who do that. Hold up your head, my daughter. God has been good to you. He has given you a son whom all men may look in the face, of whom you need never be ashamed. Stephen," said the Judge, "come here."

Stephen made his way to the bedside, but because of the moisture in his eyes he saw but dimly the gaunt face. And yet he shrank back in awe at the change in it. So must all of the martyrs have looked when the fire of the faggots licked their feet. So must John Bunyan have stared through his prison bars at the sky.

"Stephen," he said, "you have been faithful in a few things. So shall you be made ruler over many things. The little I have I leave to you, and the chief of this is an untarnished name. I know that you will be true to it because I have tried your strength. Listen carefully to what I have to say, for I have thought over it long. In the days gone by our fathers worked for the good of the people, and they had no thought of gain. A time is coming when we shall need that blood and that bone in this Republic. Wealth not yet dreamed of will flow out of this land, and the waters of it will rot all save the pure, and corrupt all save the incorruptible. Half-tried men wilt go down before that flood. You and those like you will remember how your fathers governed,—strongly, sternly, justly. It was so that they governed themselves.

"Be vigilant. Serve your city, serve your state, but above all serve your country."

He paused to catch his breath, which was coming painfully now, and reached out his bony hand to seek Stephen's. "I was harsh with you at first, my son," he went on. "I wished to try you. And when I had tried you I wished your mind to open, to keep pace with the growth of this nation. I sent you to see Abraham Lincoln that you might be born again —in the West. You were born again. I saw it when you came back—I saw it in your face. O God," he cried, with sudden eloquence. "I would that his hands—Abraham Lincoln's hands—might be laid upon all who complain and cavil and criticise, and think of the little things in life: I would that his spirit might possess their spirit!"

He stopped again. They marvelled and were awed, for never in all his days had such speech broken from this man. "Good-by, Stephen," he said, when they thought he was not to speak again. "Hold the image of Abraham Lincoln in front of you. Never forget him. You—you are a man after his own heart—and—and mine."

The last word was scarcely audible. They started for ward, for his eyes were closed. But presently he stirred again, and opened them.

"Brinsmade," he said, "Brinsmade, take care of my orphan girls. Send Shadrach here."

The negro came forth, shuffling and sobbing, from the doorway.

"You ain't gwine away, Marse Judge?"

"Yes, Shadrach, good-by. You have served me well, I have left you provided for."

Shadrach kissed the hand of whose secret charity he knew so much. Then the Judge withdrew it, and motioned to him to rise. He called his oldest friend by name. And Colonel Carvel came from the corner where he had been listening, with his face drawn.

"Good-by, Comyn. You were my friend when there was none other. You were true to me when the hand of every man was against me. You—you have risked your life to come to me here, May God spare it for Virginia."

At the sound of her name, the girl started. She came and bent over him. And when she kissed him on the forehead, he trembled.

"Uncle Silas!" she faltered.

Weakly he reached up and put his hands on her shoulders. He whispered in her ear. The tears came and lay wet upon her lashes as she undid the button at his throat.

There, on a piece of cotton twine, hung a little key, She took it off, but still his hands held her.

"I have saved it for you, my dear," he said. "God bless you—" why did his eyes seek Stephen's?—"and make your life happy. Virginia—will you play my hymn—once more—once more?"

They lifted the night lamp from the piano, and the medicine. It was Stephen who stripped it of the black cloth it had worn, who stood by Virginia ready to lift the lid when she had turned the lock. The girl's exaltation gave a trembling touch divine to the well-remembered chords, and those who heard were lifted, lifted far above and beyond the power of earthly spell.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom Lead Thou me on The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet! I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me."

A sigh shook Silas Whipple's wasted frame, and he died.



THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

Volume 8.



CHAPTER XII

THE LAST CARD

Mr. Brinsmade and the Doctor were the first to leave the little room where Silas Whipple had lived and worked and died, Mr. Brinsmade bent upon one of those errands which claimed him at all times. He took Shadrach with him. Virginia sat on, a vague fear haunting her,—a fear for her father's safety. Where was Clarence? What had he seen? Was the place watched? These questions, at first intruding upon her sorrow, remained to torture her.

Softly she stirred from the chair where she had sat before the piano, and opened the door of the outer office. A clock in a steeple near by was striking twelve. The Colonel did not raise his head. Only Stephen saw her go; she felt his eyes following her, and as she slipped out lifted hers to meet them for a brief instant through the opening of the door. Then it closed behind her.

First of all she knew that the light in the outer office was burning dimly, and the discovery gave her a shock. Who had turned it down? Had Clarence? Was he here? Fearfully searching the room for him, her gaze was held by a figure in the recess of the window at the back of the room. A solid, bulky figure it was, and, though uncertainly outlined in the semi-darkness, she knew it. She took a step nearer, and a cry escaped her.

The man was Eliphalet Hopper. He got down from the sill with a motion at once sheepish and stealthy. Her breath caught, and instinctively she gave back toward the door, as if to open it again.

"Hold on!" he said. "I've got something I want to say to you, Miss Virginia."

His tones seemed strangely natural. They were not brutal. But she shivered and paused, horrified at the thought of what she was about to do. Her father was in that room—and Stephen. She must keep them there, and get this man away. She must not show fright before him, and yet she could not trust her voice to speak just then. She must not let him know that she was afraid of him—this she kept repeating to herself. But how to act? Suddenly an idea flashed upon her.

Virginia never knew how she gathered the courage to pass him, even swiftly, and turn up the gas. He started back, blinking as the jet flared. For a moment she stood beside it, with her head high; confronting him and striving to steady herself for speech.

"Why have you come here?" she said. "Judge Whipple—died—to-night."

The dominating note in his answer was a whine, as if, in spite of himself, he were awed.

"I ain't here to see the Judge."

She was pale, and quite motionless. And she faltered now. She felt her lips moving, but knew not whether the words had come.

"What do you mean?"

He gained confidence. The look in his little eyes was the filmy look of those of an animal feasting.

"I came here to see you," he said, "—you." She was staring at him now, in horror. "And if you don't give me what I want, I cal'late to see some one else—in there," said Mr. Hopper.

He smiled, for she was swaying, her lids half closed. By a supreme effort she conquered her terror and looked at him. The look was in his eyes still, intensified now.

"How dare you speak to me after what has happened! she said. If Colonel Carvel were here, he would—kill you."

He flinched at the name and the word, involuntarily. He wiped his forehead, hot at the very thought.

"I want to know!" he exclaimed, in faint-hearted irony. Then, remembering his advantage, he stepped close to her.

"He is here," he said, intense now. "He is here, in that there room." He seized her wrists. Virginia struggled, and yet she refrained from crying out. "He never leaves this city without I choose. I can have him hung if I choose," he whispered, next to her.

"Oh!" she cried; "oh, if you choose!"

Still his body crept closer, and his face closer. And her strength was going.

"There's but one price to pay," he said hoarsely, "there's but one price to pay, and that's you—you. I cal'late you'll marry me now."

Delirious at the touch of her, he did not hear the door open. Her senses were strained for that very sound. She heard it close again, and a footstep across the room. She knew the step—she knew the voice, and her heart leaped at the sound of it in anger. An arm in a blue sleeve came between them, and Eliphalet Hopper staggered and fell across the books on the table, his hand to his face. Above him towered Stephen Brice. Towered was the impression that came to Virginia then, and so she thought of the scene ever afterward. Small bits, like points of tempered steel, glittered in Stephen's eyes, and his hands following up the mastery he had given them clutched Mr. Hopper's shoulders. Twice Stephen shook him so that his head beat upon the table.

"You—you beast!" he cried, but he kept his voice low. And then, as if he expected Hopper to reply: "Shall I kill you?"

Again he shook him violently. He felt Virginia's touch on his arm.

"Stephen!" she cried, "your wounds! Be careful! Oh, do be careful!"

She had called him Stephen. He turned slowly, and his hands fell from Mr. Hopper's cowering form as his eyes met hers. Even he could not fathom the appeal, the yearning, in their dark blue depths. And yet what he saw there made him tremble. She turned away, trembling too.

"Please sit down," she entreated. "He—he won't touch me again while you are here."

Eliphalet Hopper raised himself from the desk, and one of the big books fell with a crash to the floor. Then they saw him shrink, his eyes fixed upon some one behind them. Before the Judge's door stood Colonel Carvel, in calm, familiar posture, his feet apart, and his head bent forward as he pulled at his goatee.

"What is this man doing here, Virginia?" he asked. She did not answer him, nor did speech seem to come easily to Mr. Hopper in that instant. Perhaps the sight of Colonel Carvel had brought before him too, vividly the memory of that afternoon at Glencoe.

All at once Virginia grasped the fulness of the power in this man's hands. At a word from him her father would be shot as a spy—and Stephen Brice, perhaps, as a traitor. But if Colonel Carvel should learn that he had seized her,—here was the terrible danger of the situation. Well she knew what the Colonel would do. Would. Stephen tell him? She trusted in his coolness that he would not.

Before a word of reply came from any of the three, a noise was heard on the stairway. Some one was coming up. There followed four seconds of suspense, and then Clarence came in. She saw that his face wore a worried, dejected look. It changed instantly when he glanced about him, and an oath broke from his lips as he singled out Eliphalet Hopper standing in sullen aggressiveness, beside the table.

"So you're the spy, are you?" he said in disgust. Then he turned his back and faced his uncle. "I saw, him in Williams's entry as we drove up. He got away from me."

A thought seemed to strike him. He strode to the open window at the back of the office, and looked out, There was a roof under it.

"The sneak got in here," he said. "He knew I was waiting for him in the street. So you're the spy, are you?"

Mr. Hopper passed a heavy hand across the cheek where Stephen had struck him.

"No, I ain't the spy," he said, with a meaning glance at the Colonel.

"Then what are you doing here?" demanded Clarence, fiercely.

"I cal'late that he knows," Eliphalet replied, jerking his head toward Colonel Carvel. "Where's his Confederate uniform? What's to prevent my calling up the provost's guard below?" he continued, with a smile that was hideous on his swelling face.

It was the Colonel who answered him, very quickly and very clearly.

"Nothing whatever, Mr. Hopper," he said. "This is the way out." He pointed at the door. Stephen, who was watching him, could not tell whether it were a grim smile that creased the corners of the Colonel's mouth as he added. "You might prefer the window."

Mr. Hopper did not move, but his eyes shifted to Virginia's form. Stephen deliberately thrust himself between them that he might not see her.

"What are you waiting for?" said the Colonel, in the mild voice that should have been an ominous warning. Still Mr. Hopper did not move. It was clear that he had not reckoned upon all of this; that he had waited in the window to deal with Virginia alone. But now the very force of a desire which had gathered strength in many years made him reckless. His voice took on the oily quality in which he was wont to bargain.

"Let's be calm about this business, Colonel," he said. "We won't say anything about the past. But I ain't set on having you shot. There's a consideration that would stop me, and I cal'late you know what it is."

Then the Colonel made a motion. But before he had taken a step Virginia had crossed the room swiftly, and flung herself upon him.

"Oh, don't, Pa!" she cried. "Don't! Tell him that I will agree to it. Yes, I will. I can't have you—shot." The last word came falteringly, faintly.

"Let me go,—honey," whispered the Colonel, gently. His eyes did not leave Eliphalet. He tried to disengage himself, but her fingers were clasped about his neck in a passion of fear and love. And then, while she clung to him, her head was raised to listen. The sound of Stephen Brice's voice held her as in a spell. His words were coming coldly, deliberately, and yet so sharply that each seemed to fall like a lash.

"Mr. Hopper, if ever I hear of your repeating what you have seen or heard in this room, I will make this city and this state too hot for you to live in. I know you. I know how you hide in areas, how you talk sedition in private, how you have made money out of other men's misery. And, what is more, I can prove that you have had traitorous dealings with the Confederacy. General Sherman has been good enough to call himself a friend of mine, and if he prosecutes you for your dealings in Memphis, you will get a term in a Government prison, You ought to be hung. Colonel Carvel has shown you the door. Now go."

And Mr, Hopper went.



CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE LETTERS OF MAJOR STEPHEN BRICE

Of the Staff of General Sherman on the March to the Sea, and on the March from Savannah Northward.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI GOLDSBORO, N.C. MARCH 24, 1865

DEAR MOTHER: The South Carolina Campaign is a thing of the past. I pause as I write these words—they seem so incredible to me. We have marched the four hundred and twenty-five miles in fifty days, and the General himself has said that it is the longest and most important march ever made by an organized army in a civilized country. I know that you will not be misled by the words "civilized country." Not until the history of this campaign is written will the public realize the wide rivers and all but impassable swamps we have crossed with our baggage trains and artillery. The roads (by courtesy so called) were a sea of molasses and every mile of them has had to be corduroyed. For fear of worrying you I did not write you from Savannah how they laughed at us for starting at that season of the year. They said we would not go ten miles, and I most solemnly believe that no one but "Uncle Billy" and an army organized and equipped by him could have gone ten miles. Nothing seems to stop him. You have probably remarked in the tone of my letters ever since we left Kingston for the sea, a growing admiration for "my General."

It seems very strange that this wonderful tactician can be the same man I met that day going to the Arsenal in the streetcar, and again at Camp Jackson. I am sure that history will give him a high place among the commanders of the world. Certainly none was ever more tireless than he. He never fights a battle when it can be avoided, and his march into Columbia while threatening Charleston and Augusta was certainly a master stroke of strategy.

I think his simplicity his most remarkable trait. You should see him as he rides through the army, an erect figure, with his clothes all angular and awry, and an expanse of white sock showing above his low shoes. You can hear his name running from file to file; and some times the new regiments can't resist cheering. He generally says to the Colonel: —"Stop that noise, sir. Don't like it."

On our march to the sea, if the orders were ever given to turn northward, "the boys" would get very much depressed. One moonlight night I was walking my horse close to the General's over the pine needles, when we overheard this conversation between two soldiers:— "Say, John," said one, "I guess Uncle Billy don't know our corps is goin' north."

"I wonder if he does,'" said John. "If I could only get a sight of them white socks, I'd know it was all right."

The General rode past without a word, but I heard him telling the story to Mower the next day.

I can find little if any change in his manner since I knew him first. He is brusque, but kindly, and he has the same comradeship with officers and men—and even the negroes who flock to our army. But few dare to take advantage of it, and they never do so twice. I have been very near to him, and have tried not to worry him or ask many foolish questions. Sometimes on the march he will beckon me to close up to him, and we have a conversation something on this order:— "There's Kenesaw, Brice."

"Yes, sir."

Pointing with his arm.

"Went beyond lines there with small party. Rebel battery on summit. Had to git. Fired on. Next day I thought Rebels would leave in the night. Got up before daylight, fixed telescope on stand, and waited. Watched top of Kenesaw. No Rebel. Saw one blue man creep up, very cautious, looked around, waved his hat. Rebels gone. Thought so."

This gives you but a faint idea of the vividness of his talk. When we make a halt for any time, the general officers and their staffs flock to headquarters to listen to his stories. When anything goes wrong, his perception of it is like a lightning flash,—and he acts as quickly.

By the way, I have just found the letter he wrote me, offering this staff position. Please keep it carefully, as it is something I shall value all my life.

GAYLESVILLE, ALABAMA, October 25, 1864.

MAJOR STEPHEN A. BRICE:

Dear Sir,—The world goes on, and wicked men sound asleep. Davis has sworn to destroy my army, and Beauregard has come to do the work,—so if you expect to share in our calamity, come down. I offer you this last chance for staff duty, and hope you have had enough in the field. I do not wish to hurry you, but you can't get aboard a ship at sea. So if you want to make the trip, come to Chattanooga and take your chances of meeting me.

Yours truly,

W. T. SHERMAN, Major General.

One night—at Cheraw, I think it was—he sent for me to talk to him. I found him lying on a bed of Spanish moss they had made for him. He asked me a great many questions about St. Louis, and praised Mr. Brinsmade, especially his management of the Sanitary Commission.

"Brice," he said, after a while, "you remember when Grant sent me to beat off Joe Johnston's army from Vicksburg. You were wounded then, by the way, in that dash Lauman made. Grant thought he ought to warn me against Johnston.

"'He's wily, Sherman,' said he. 'He's a dangerous man.'

"'Grant,' said I, 'you give me men enough and time enough to look over the ground, and I'm not afraid of the devil.'"

Nothing could sum up the man better than that. And now what a trick of fate it is that he has Johnston before him again, in what we hope will prove the last gasp of the war! He likes Johnston, by the way, and has the greatest respect for him.

I wish you could have peeped into our camp once in a while. In the rare bursts of sunshine on this march our premises have been decorated with gay red blankets, and sombre gray ones brought from the quartermasters, and white Hudson's Bay blankets (not so white now), all being between forked sticks. It is wonderful how the pitching of a few tents, and the busy crackle of a few fires, and the sound of voices—sometimes merry, sometimes sad, depending on the weather, will change the look of a lonely pine knoll. You ask me how we fare. I should be heartily ashamed if a word of complaint ever fell from my lips. But the men! Whenever I wake up at night with my feet in a puddle between the blankets, I think of the men. The corduroy roads which our horses stumble over through the mud, they make as well as march on. Our flies are carried in wagons, and our utensils and provisions. They must often bear on their backs the little dog-tents, under which, put up by their own labor, they crawl to sleep, wrapped in a blanket they have carried all day, perhaps waist deep in water. The food they eat has been in their haversacks for many a weary mile, and is cooked in the little skillet and pot which have also been a part of their burden. Then they have their musket and accoutrements, and the "forty rounds" at their backs. Patiently, cheerily tramping along, going they know not where, nor care much either, so it be not in retreat. Ready to make roads, throw up works, tear up railroads, or hew out and build wooden bridges; or, best of all, to go for the Johnnies under hot sun or heavy rain, through swamp and mire and quicksand. They marched ten miles to storm Fort McAllister. And how the cheers broke from them when the pop pop pop of the skirmish line began after we came in sight of Savannah! No man who has seen but not shared their life may talk of personal hardship.

We arrived at this pretty little town yesterday, so effecting a junction with Schofield, who got in with the 3d Corps the day before. I am writing at General Schofield's headquarters. There was a bit of a battle on Tuesday at Bentonville, and we have come hither in smoke, as usual. But this time we thank Heaven that it is not the smoke of burning homes, —only some resin the "Johnnies" set on fire before they left.

I must close. General Sherman has just sent for me.

ON BOARD DESPATCH BOAT "MARTIN." AT SEA, March 25, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: A most curious thing has happened. But I may as well begin at the beginning. When I stopped writing last evening at the summons of the General, I was about to tell you something of the battle of Bentonville on Tuesday last. Mower charged through as bad a piece of wood and swamp as I ever saw, and got within one hundred yards of Johnston himself, who was at the bridge across Mill Creek. Of course we did not know this at the time, and learned it from prisoners.

As I have written you, I have been under fire very little since coming to the staff. When the battle opened, however, I saw that if I stayed with the General (who was then behind the reserves) I would see little or nothing; I went ahead "to get information" beyond the line of battle into the woods. I did not find these favorable to landscape views, and just as I was turning my horse back again I caught sight of a commotion some distance to my right. The Rebel skirmish line had fallen back just that instant, two of our skirmishers were grappling with a third man, who was fighting desperately. It struck me as singular that the fellow was not in gray, but had on some sort of dark clothes.

I could not reach them in the swamp on horseback, and was in the act of dismounting when the man fell, and then they set out to carry him to the rear, still farther to my right, beyond the swamp. I shouted, and one of the skirmishers came up. I asked him what the matter was.

"We've got a spy, sir," he said excitedly.

"A spy! Here?"

"Yes, Major. He was hid in the thicket yonder, lying flat on his face. He reckoned that our boys would run right over him and that he'd get into our lines that way. Tim Foley stumbled on him, and he put up as good a fight with his fists as any man I ever saw."

Just then a regiment swept past us. That night I told the General, who sent over to the headquarters of the 17th Corps to inquire. The word came back that the man's name was Addison, and he claimed to be a Union sympathizer who owned a plantation near by. He declared that he had been conscripted by the Rebels, wounded, sent back home, and was now about to be pressed in again. He had taken this method of escaping to our lines. It was a common story enough, but General Mower added in his message that he thought the story fishy. This was because the man's appearance was very striking, and he seemed the type of Confederate fighter who would do and dare anything. He had a wound, which had been a bad one, evidently got from a piece of shell. But they had been able to find nothing on him. Sherman sent back word to keep the man until he could see him in person. It was about nine o'clock last night when I reached the house the General has taken. A prisoner's guard was resting outside, and the hall was full of officers. They said that the General was awaiting me, and pointed to the closed door of a room that had been the dining room. I opened it.

Two candles were burning in pewter sticks on the bare mahogany table. There was the General sitting beside them, with his legs crossed, holding some crumpled tissue paper very near his eyes, and reading. He did not look up when I entered. I was aware of a man standing, tall and straight, just out of range of the candles' rays. He wore the easy dress of a Southern planter, with the broad felt hat. The head was flung back so that there was just a patch of light on the chin, and the lids of the eyes in the shadow were half closed.

My sensations are worth noting. For the moment I felt precisely as I had when I was hit by that bullet in Lauman's charge. I was aware of something very like pain, yet I could not place the cause of it. But this is what since has made me feel queer: you doubtless remember staying at Hollingdean, when I was a boy, and hearing the story of Lord Northwell's daredevil Royalist ancestor,—the one with the lace collar over the dull-gold velvet, and the pointed chin, and the lazy scorn in the eyes. Those eyes are painted with drooping lids. The first time I saw Clarence Colfax I thought of that picture—and now I thought of the picture first.

The General's voice startled me.

"Major Brice, do you know this gentleman?" he asked.

"Yes, General."

"Who is he?"

"His name is Colfax, sir—Colonel Colfax, I think"

"Thought so," said the General.

I have thought much of that scene since, as I am steaming northward over green seas and under cloudless skies, and it has seemed very unreal. I should almost say supernatural when I reflect how I have run across this man again and again, and always opposing him. I can recall just how he looked at the slave auction, which seem, so long ago: very handsome, very boyish, and yet with the air of one to be deferred to. It was sufficiently remarkable that I should have found him in Vicksburg. But now—to be brought face to face with him in this old dining room in Goldsboro! And he a prisoner. He had not moved. I did not know how he would act, but I went up to him and held out my hand, and said.—"How do you do, Colonel Colfax?"

I am sure that my voice was not very steady, for I cannot help liking him And then his face lighted up and he gave me his hand. And he smiled at me and again at the General, as much as to say that it was all over. He has a wonderful smile.

"We seem to run into each other, Major Brice," said he.

The pluck of the man was superb. I could see that the General, too, was moved, from the way he looked at him. And he speaks a little more abruptly at such times.

"Guess that settles it, Colonel," he said.

"I reckon it does, General," said Clarence, still smiling. The General turned from him to the table with a kind of jerk and clapped his hand on the tissue paper.

"These speak for themselves, sir," he said. "It is very plain that they would have reached the prominent citizens for whom they were intended if you had succeeded in your enterprise. You were captured out of uniform You know enough of war to appreciate the risk you ran. Any statement to make?"

"No, sir."

"Call Captain Vaughan, Brice, and ask him to conduct the prisoner back."

"May I speak to him, General?" I asked. The General nodded.

I asked him if I could write home for him or do anything else. That seemed to touch him. Some day I shall tell you what he said.

Then Vaughan took him out, and I heard the guard shoulder arms and tramp away in the night. The General and I were left alone with the mahogany table between us, and a family portrait of somebody looking down on us from the shadow on the wall. A moist spring air came in at the open windows, and the candles flickered. After a silence, I ventured to say:

"I hope he won't be shot, General."

"Don't know, Brice," he answered. "Can't tell now. Hate to shoot him, but war is war. Magnificent class he belongs to—pity we should have to fight those fellows."

He paused, and drummed on the table. "Brice," said he, "I'm going to send you to General Grant at City Point with despatches. I'm sorry Dunn went back yesterday, but it can't be helped. Can you start in half an hour?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll have to ride to Kinston. The railroad won't be through until to-morrow: I'll telegraph there, and to General Easton at Morehead City. He'll have a boat for you. Tell Grant I expect to run up there in a day or two myself, when things are arranged here. You may wait until I come."

"Yes, sir."

I turned to go, but Clarence Colfax was on my mind "General?"

"Eh! what?"

"General, could you hold Colonel Colfax until I see you again?"

It was a bold thing to say, and I quaked. And he looked at me in his keen way, through and through "You saved his life once before, didn't you?"

"You allowed me to have him sent home from Vicksburg, sir."

He answered with one of his jokes—apropos of something he said on the Court House steps at Vicksburg. Perhaps I shall tell it to you sometime.

"Well, well," he said, "I'll see, I'll see. Thank God this war is pretty near over. I'll let you know, Brice, before I shoot him."

I rode the thirty odd miles to Kinston in—little more than three hours. A locomotive was waiting for me, and I jumped into a cab with a friendly engineer. Soon we were roaring seaward through the vast pine forests. It was a lonely journey, and you were much in my mind. My greatest apprehension was that we might be derailed and the despatches captured; for as fast as our army had advanced, the track of it had closed again, like the wake of a ship at sea. Guerillas were roving about, tearing up ties and destroying bridges.

There was one five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming. The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire. But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we were upon them.

Not one gaunt figure stood between them and us. Not one shot broke the stillness of the night. As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white in the chill morning air.



CHAPTER XIV

THE SAME, CONTINUED

HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES, CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 28, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: I arrived here safely the day before yesterday, and I hope that you will soon receive some of the letters I forwarded on that day. It is an extraordinary place, this City Point; a military city sprung up like a mushroom in a winter. And my breath was quite taken away when I first caught sight of it on the high table-land. The great bay in front of it, which the Appomattox helps to make, is a maze of rigging and smoke-pipes, like the harbor of a prosperous seaport. There are gunboats and supply boats, schooners and square-riggers and steamers, all huddled together, and our captain pointed out to me the 'Malvern' flying Admiral Porter's flag. Barges were tied up at the long wharves, and these were piled high with wares and flanked by squat warehouses. Although it was Sunday, a locomotive was puffing and panting along the foot of the ragged bank.

High above, on the flat promontory between the two rivers, is the city of tents and wooden huts, the great trees in their fresh faint green towering above the low roofs. At the point of the bluff a large flag drooped against its staff, and I did not have to be told that this was General Grant's headquarters.

There was a fine steamboat lying at the wharf, and I had hardly stepped ashore before they told me she was President Lincoln's. I read the name on her—the 'River Queen'. Yes, the President is here, too, with his wife and family.

There are many fellows here with whom I was brought up in Boston. I am living with Jack Hancock, whom you will remember well. He is a captain now, and has a beard.

But I must go on with my story. I went straight to General Grant's headquarters,—just a plain, rough slat house such as a contractor might build for a temporary residence. Only the high flagstaff and the Stars and Stripes distinguish it from many others of the same kind. A group of officers stood chatting outside of it, and they told me that the General had walked over to get his mail. He is just as unassuming and democratic as "my general." General Rankin took me into the office, a rude room, and we sat down at the long table there. Presently the door opened, and a man came in with a slouch hat on and his coat unbuttoned. He was smoking a cigar. We rose to our feet, and I saluted.

It was the general-in-chief. He stared at me, but said nothing.

"General, this is Major Brice of General Sherman's staff. He has brought despatches from Goldsboro," said Rankin.

He nodded, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and reached out for the despatches. While reading them he did not move, except to light another cigar. I am getting hardened to unrealities,—perhaps I should say marvels, now. Our country abounds in them. It did not seem so strange that this silent General with the baggy trousers was the man who had risen by leaps and bounds in four years to be general-in-chief of our armies. His face looks older and more sunken than it did on that day in the street near the Arsenal, in St. Louis, when he was just a military carpet-bagger out of a job. He is not changed otherwise. But how different the impressions made by the man in authority and the same man out of authority!

He made a sufficient impression upon me then, as I told you at the time. That was because I overheard his well-merited rebuke to Hopper. But I little dreamed that I was looking on the man who was to come out of the West and save this country from disunion. And how quietly and simply he has done it, without parade or pomp or vainglory. Of all those who, with every means at their disposal, have tried to conquer Lee, he is the only one who has in any manner succeeded. He has been able to hold him fettered while Sherman has swept the Confederacy. And these are the two men who were unknown when the war began.

When the General had finished reading the despatches, he folded them quickly and put them in his pocket.

"Sit down and tell me about this last campaign of yours, Major," he said.

I talked with him for about half an hour. I should rather say talked to him. He is a marked contrast to Sherman in this respect. I believe that he only opened his lips to ask two questions. You may well believe that they were worth the asking, and they revealed an intimate knowledge of our march from Savannah. I was interrupted many times by the arrival of different generals, aides, etc. He sat there smoking, imperturbable. Sometimes he said "yes" or "no," but oftener he merely nodded his head. Once he astounded by a brief question an excitable young lieutenant, who floundered. The General seemed to know more than he about the matter he had in hand.

When I left him, he asked me where I was quartered, and said he hoped I would be comfortable.

Jack Hancock was waiting for me, and we walked around the city, which even has barber shops. Everywhere were signs of preparation, for the roads are getting dry, and the General preparing for a final campaign against Lee. Poor Lee! What a marvellous fight he has made with his material. I think that he will be reckoned among the greatest generals of our race.

Of course, I was very anxious to get a glimpse of the President, and so we went down to the wharf, where we heard that he had gone off for a horseback ride. They say that he rides nearly every day, over the corduroy roads and through the swamps, and wherever the boys see that tall hat they cheer. They know it as well as the lookout tower on the flats of Bermuda Hundred. He lingers at the campfires and swaps stories with the officers, and entertains the sick and wounded in the hospitals. Isn't it like him?

He hasn't changed, either. I believe that the great men don't change. Away with your Napoleons and your Marlboroughs and your Stuarts. These are the days of simple men who command by force of character, as well as knowledge. Thank God for the American! I believe that he will change the world, and strip it of its vainglory and hypocrisy.

In the evening, as we were sitting around Hancock's fire, an officer came in.

"Is Major Brice here?" he asked. I jumped up.

"The President sends his compliments, Major, and wants to know if you would care to pay him a little visit."

If I would care to pay him a little visit! That officer had to hurry to keep up with the as I walked to the wharf. He led me aboard the River Queen, and stopped at the door of the after-cabin.

Mr. Lincoln was sitting under the lamp, slouched down in his chair, in the position I remembered so well. It was as if I had left him but yesterday. He was whittling, and he had made some little toy for his son Tad, who ran out as I entered.

When he saw me, the President rose to his great height, a sombre, towering figure in black. He wears a scraggly beard now. But the sad smile, the kindly eyes in their dark caverns, the voice—all were just the same. I stopped when I looked upon the face. It was sad and lined when I had known it, but now all the agony endured by the millions, North and South, seemed written on it.

"Don't you remember me, Major?" he asked.

The wonder was that he had remembered me! I took his big, bony hand, which reminded me of Judge Whipple's. Yes, it was just as if I had been with him always, and he were still the gaunt country lawyer.

"Yes, sir," I said, "indeed I do."

He looked at me with that queer expression of mirth he sometimes has.

"Are these Boston ways, Steve?" he asked. "They're tenacious. I didn't think that any man could travel so close to Sherman and keep 'em."

"They're unfortunate ways, sir," I said, "if they lead you to misjudge me."

He laid his hand on my shoulder, just as he had done at Freeport.

"I know you, Steve," he said. "I shuck an ear of corn before I buy it. I've kept tab on you a little the last five years, and when I heard Sherman had sent a Major Brice up here, I sent for you."

What I said was boyish. "I tried very hard to get a glimpse of you to-day, Mr. Lincoln. I wanted to see you again."

He was plainly pleased.

"I'm glad to hear it, Steve," he said. "Then you haven't joined the ranks of the grumblers? You haven't been one of those who would have liked to try running this country for a day or two, just to show me how to do it?"

"No, sir," I said, laughing.

"Good!" he cried, slapping his knee. "I didn't think you were that kind, Steve. Now sit down and tell me about this General of mine who wears seven-leagued boots. What was it—four hundred and twenty miles in fifty days? How many navigable rivers did he step across?" He began to count on those long fingers of his. "The Edisto, the Broad, the Catawba, the Pedee, and—?"

"The Cape Fear," I said.

"Is—is the General a nice man?" asked Mr. Lincoln, his eyes twinkling.

"Yes, sir, he is that," I answered heartily. "And not a man in the army wants anything when he is around. You should see that Army of the Mississippi, sir. They arrived in Goldsboro' in splendid condition."

He got up and gathered his coat-tails under his arms, and began to walk up and down the cabin.

"What do the boys call the General?" he asked.

I told him "Uncle Billy." And, thinking the story of the white socks might amuse him, I told him that. It did amuse him.

"Well, now," he said, "any man that has a nickname like that is all right. That's the best recommendation you can give the General—just say 'Uncle Billy.'" He put one lip over the other. "You've given 'Uncle Billy' a good recommendation, Steve," he said. "Did you ever hear the story of Mr. Wallace's Irish gardener?"

"No, sir."

"Well, when Wallace was hiring his gardener he asked him whom he had been living with.

"'Misther Dalton, sorr.'

"'Have you a recommendation, Terence?'

"'A ricommindation is it, sorr? Sure I have nothing agin Misther Dalton, though he moightn't be knowing just the respict the likes of a first-class garthener is entitled to.'"

He did not laugh. He seldom does, it seems, at his own stories. But I could not help laughing over the "ricommindation" I had given the General. He knew that I was embarrassed, and said kindly:— "Now tell me something about 'Uncle Billy's Bummers.' I hear that they have a most effectual way of tearing up railroads."

I told him of Poe's contrivance of the hook and chain, and how the heaviest rails were easily overturned with it, and how the ties were piled and fired and the rails twisted out of shape. The President listened to every word with intense interest.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed, "we have got a general. Caesar burnt his bridges behind him, but Sherman burns his rails. Now tell me some more."

He helped me along by asking questions. Then I began to tell him how the negroes had flocked into our camps, and how simply and plainly the General had talked to them, advising them against violence of any kind, and explaining to them that "Freedom" meant only the liberty to earn their own living in their own way, and not freedom from work.

"We have got a general, sure enough," he cried. "He talks to them plainly, does he, so that they understand? I say to you, Brice," he went on earnestly, "the importance of plain talk can't be overestimated. Any thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or a negro can grasp. Any book, however deep, can be written in terms that everybody can comprehend, if a man only tries hard enough. When I was a boy I used to hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out for myself. I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate meant. So I stopped my studies then and there and got a volume of Euclid. Before I got through I could demonstrate everything in it, and I have never been bothered with demonstrate since."

I thought of those wonderfully limpid speeches of his: of the Freeport debates, and of the contrast between his style and Douglas's. And I understood the reason for it at last. I understood the supreme mind that had conceived the Freeport Question. And as I stood before him then, at the close of this fearful war, the words of the Gospel were in my mind. 'So the last shall be first, and the first, last; for many be called, but few chosen.'

How I wished that all those who have maligned and tortured him could talk with him as I had talked with him. To know his great heart would disarm them of all antagonism. They would feel, as I feel, that his life is so much nobler than theirs, and his burdens so much heavier, that they would go away ashamed of their criticism.

He said to me once, "Brice, I hope we are in sight of the end, now. I hope that we may get through without any more fighting. I don't want to see any more of our countrymen killed. And then," he said, as if talking to himself, "and then we must show them mercy—mercy."

I thought it a good time to mention Colfax's case. He has been on my mind ever since. Mr. Lincoln listened attentively. Once he sighed, and he was winding his long fingers around each other while I talked.

"I saw the man captured, Mr. Lincoln," I concluded, "And if a technicality will help him out, he was actually within his own skirmish line at the time. The Rebel skirmishers had not fallen back on each side of him."

"Brice," he said, with that sorrowful smile, "a technicality might save Colfax, but it won't save me. Is this man a friend of yours?" he asked.

That was a poser.

"I think he is, Mr. Lincoln. I should like to call him so. I admire him." And I went on to tell of what he had done at Vicksburg, leaving out, however, my instrumentality in having him sent north. The President used almost Sherman's words.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed. (That seems to be a favorite expression of his.) "Those fellows were born to fight. If it wasn't for them, the South would have quit long ago." Then he looked at me in his funny way, and said, "See here, Steve, if this Colfax isn't exactly a friend of yours, there must be some reason why you are pleading for him in this way."

"Well, sir," I said, at length, "I should like to get him off on account of his cousin, Miss Virginia Carvel." And I told him something about Miss Carvel, and how she had helped you with the Union sergeant that day in the hot hospital. And how she had nursed Judge Whipple."

"She's a fine woman," he said. "Those women have helped those men to prolong this war about three years.

"And yet we must save them for the nation's sake. They are to be the mothers of our patriots in days to come. Is she a friend of yours, too, Steve?"

What was I to say?

"Not especially, sir," I answered finally. I have had to offend her rather often. But I know that she likes my mother."

"Why!" he cried, jumping up, "she's a daughter of Colonel Carvel. I always had an admiration for that man. An ideal Southern gentleman of the old school,—courteous, as honorable and open as the day, and as brave as a lion. You've heard the story of how he threw a man named Babcock out of his store, who tried to bribe him?"

"I heard you tell it in that tavern, sir. And I have heard it since." It did me good to hear the Colonel praised.

"I always liked that story," he said. "By the way, what's become of the Colonel?"

"He got away—South, sir," I answered. "He couldn't stand it. He hasn't been heard of since the summer of '63. They think he was killed in Texas. But they are not positive. They probably never will be," I added. He was silent awhile.

"Too bad!" he said. "Too bad. What stuff those men are made of! And so you want me to pardon this Colfax?"

"It would be presumptuous in me to go that far, sir," I replied. "But I hoped you might speak of it to the General when he comes. And I would be glad of the opportunity to testify."

He took a few strides up and down the room.

"Well, well," he said, "that's my vice—pardoning, saying yes. It's always one more drink with me. It—" he smiled—"it makes me sleep better. I've pardoned enough Rebels to populate New Orleans. Why," he continued, with his whimsical look, "just before I left Washington, in comes one of your Missouri senators with a list of Rebels who are shut up in McDowell's and Alton. I said:— "'Senator, you're not going to ask me to turn loose all those at once?'

"He said just what you said when you were speaking of Missouri a while ago, that he was afraid of guerilla warfare, and that the war was nearly over. I signed 'em. And then what does he do but pull out another batch longer than the first! And those were worse than the first.

"'What! you don't want me to turn these loose, too?'

"'Yes, I do, Mr. President. I think it will pay to be merciful.'

"'Then durned if I don't,' I said, and I signed 'em."

STEAMER "RIVER QUEEN." ON THE POTOMAC, April 9, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: I am glad that the telegrams I have been able to send reached you safely. I have not had time to write, and this will be but a short letter.

You will be surprised to see this heading. I am on the President's boat, in the President's party, bound with him for Washington. And this is how it happened: The very afternoon of the day I wrote you, General Sherman himself arrived at City Point on the steamer 'Russia'. I heard the salutes, and was on the wharf to meet him. That same afternoon he and General Grant and Admiral Porter went aboard the River Queen to see the President. How I should have liked to be present at that interview! After it was over they all came out of the cabin together General Grant silent, and smoking, as usual; General Sherman talking vivaciously; and Lincoln and the Admiral smiling and listening. That was historic! I shall never expect to see such a sight again in all my days. You can imagine my surprise when the President called me from where I was standing at some distance with the other officers. He put his hand on my shoulder then and there, and turned to General Sherman.

"Major Brice is a friend of mine, General," he said. "I knew him in Illinois."

"He never told me that," said the General.

"I guess he's got a great many important things shut up inside of him," said Mr. Lincoln, banteringly. "But he gave you a good recommendation, Sherman. He said that you wore white socks, and that the boys liked you and called you 'Uncle Billy.' And I told him that was the best recommendation he could give anybody."

I was frightened. But the General only looked at me with those eyes that go through everything, and then he laughed.

"Brice," he said, "You'll have my reputation ruined."

"Sherman," said Mr. Lincoln, "you don't want the Major right away, do you? Let him stay around here for a while with me. I think he'll find it interesting." He looked at the general-in-chief, who was smiling just a little bit. "I've got a sneaking notion that Grant's going to do something."

Then they all laughed.

"Certainly, Mr. Lincoln," said my General, "you may have Brice. Be careful he doesn't talk you to death—he's said too much already."

That is how I came to stay.

I have no time now to tell you all that I have seen and heard. I have ridden with the President, and have gone with him on errands of mercy and errands of cheer. I have been almost within sight of what we hope is the last struggle of this frightful war. I have listened to the guns of Five Forks, where Sheridan and Warren bore their own colors in the front of the charge, I was with Mr. Lincoln while the battle of Petersburg was raging, and there were tears in his eyes.

Then came the retreat of Lee and the instant pursuit of Grant, and —Richmond. The quiet General did not so much as turn aside to enter the smoking city he had besieged for so long. But I went there, with the President. And if I had one incident in my life to live over again, I should choose this. As we were going up the river, a disabled steamer lay across the passage in the obstruction of piles the Confederates had built. Mr. Lincoln would not wait. There were but a few of us in his party, and we stepped into Admiral Porter's twelve-oared barge and were rowed to Richmond, the smoke of the fires still darkening the sky. We landed within a block of Libby Prison.

With the little guard of ten sailors he marched the mile and a half to General Weitzel's headquarters,—the presidential mansion of the Confederacy. You can imagine our anxiety. I shall remember him always as I saw him that day, a tall, black figure of sorrow, with the high silk hat we have learned to love. Unafraid, his heart rent with pity, he walked unharmed amid such tumult as I have rarely seen. The windows filled, the streets ahead of us became choked, as the word that the President was coming ran on like quick-fire. The mob shouted and pushed. Drunken men reeled against him. The negroes wept aloud and cried hosannas. They pressed upon him that they might touch the hem of his coat, and one threw himself on his knees and kissed the President's feet.

Still he walked on unharmed, past the ashes and the ruins. Not as a conqueror was he come, to march in triumph. Not to destroy, but to heal. Though there were many times when we had to fight for a path through the crowds, he did not seem to feel the danger.

Was it because he knew that his hour was not yet come?

To-day, on the boat, as we were steaming between the green shores of the Potomac, I overheard him reading to Mr. Sumner:—

"Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further."

WILLARD'S HOTEL, WASHINGTON, April 10, 1865.

I have looked up the passage, and have written it in above. It haunts me.



CHAPTER XV

MAN OF SORROW

The train was late—very late. It was Virginia who first caught sight of the new dome of the Capitol through the slanting rain, but she merely pressed her lips together and said nothing. In the dingy brick station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad more than one person paused to look after them, and a kind-hearted lady who had been in the car kissed the girl good-by.

"You think that you can find your uncle's house, my dear?" she asked, glancing at Virginia with concern. Through all of that long journey she had worn a look apart. "Do you think you can find your uncle's house?"

Virginia started. And then she smiled as she looked at the honest, alert, and squarely built gentleman beside her.

"Captain Brent can, Mrs. Ware," she said. "He can find anything."

Whereupon the kind lady gave the Captain her hand. "You look as if you could, Captain," said she. "Remember, if General Carvel is out of town, you promised to bring her to me."

"Yes, ma'am," said Captain Lige, "and so I shall."

"Kerridge, kerridge! Right dis-a-way! No sah, dat ain't de kerridge you wants. Dat's it, lady, you'se lookin at it. Kerridge, kerridge, kerridge!"

Virginia tried bravely to smile, but she was very near to tears as she stood on the uneven pavement and looked at the scrawny horses standing patiently in the steady downpour. All sorts of people were coming and going, army officers and navy officers and citizens of states and territories, driving up and driving away.

And this was Washington!

She was thinking then of the multitude who came here with aching hearts, —with heavier hearts than was hers that day. How many of the throng hurrying by would not flee, if they could, back to the peaceful homes they had left? But perhaps those homes were gone now. Destroyed, like her own, by the war. Women with children at their breasts, and mothers bowed with sorrow, had sought this city in their agony. Young men and old had come hither, striving to keep back the thoughts of dear ones left behind, whom they might never see again. And by the thousands and tens of thousands they had passed from here to the places of blood beyond.

"Kerridge, sah! Kerridge!"

"Do you know where General Daniel Carvel lives?"

"Yes, sah, reckon I does. I Street, sah. Jump right in, sah."

Virginia sank back on the stuffy cushions of the rattle-trap, and then sat upright again and stared out of the window at the dismal scene. They were splashing through a sea of mud. Ever since they had left St. Louis, Captain Lige had done his best to cheer her, and he did not intend to desist now.

"This beats all," he cried. "So this is Washington, Why, it don't compare to St. Louis, except we haven't got the White House and the Capitol. Jinny, it would take a scow to get across the street, and we don't have ramshackly stores and nigger cabins bang up against fine Houses like that. This is ragged. That's what it is, ragged. We don't have any dirty pickaninnies dodging among the horses in our residence streets. I declare, Jinny, if those aren't pigs!"

Virginia laughed. She could not help it.

"Poor Lige!" she said. "I hope Uncle Daniel has some breakfast for you. You've had a good deal to put up with on this trip."

"Lordy, Jinny," said the Captain, "I'd put up with a good deal more than this for the sake of going anywhere with you."

"Even to such a doleful place as this?" she sighed.

"This is all right, if the sun'll only come out and dry things up and let us see the green on those trees," he said, "Lordy, how I do love to see the spring green in the sunlight!"

She put out her hand over his.

"Lige," she said, "you know you're just trying to keep up my spirits. You've been doing that ever since we left home."

"No such thing," he replied with vehemence. "There's nothing for you to be cast down about."

"Oh, but there is!" she cried. "Suppose I can't make your Black Republican President pardon Clarence!"

"Pooh!" said the Captain, squeezing her hand and trying to appear unconcerned. "Your Uncle Daniel knows Mr. Lincoln. He'll have that arranged."

Just then the rattletrap pulled up at the sidewalk, the wheels of the near side in four inches of mud, and the Captain leaped out and spread the umbrella. They were in front of a rather imposing house of brick, flanked on one side by a house just like it, and on the other by a series of dreary vacant lots where the rain had collected in pools. They climbed the steps and rang the bell. In due time the door was opened by a smiling yellow butler in black.

"Does General Carvel live here?"

"Yas, miss, But he ain't to home now. Done gone to New York."

"Oh," faltered Virginia. "Didn't he get my telegram day before yesterday? I sent it to the War Department."

"He's done gone since Saturday, miss." And then, evidently impressed by the young lady's looks, he added hospitably, "Kin I do anything fo' you, miss?"

"I'm his niece, Miss Virginia Carvel, and this is Captain Brent."

The yellow butler's face lighted up.

"Come right in, Miss Jinny, Done heerd de General speak of you often —yas'm. De General'll be to home dis a'ternoon, suah. 'Twill do him good ter see you, Miss Jinny. He's been mighty lonesome. Walk right in, Cap'n, and make yo'selves at home. Lizbeth—Lizbeth!"

A yellow maid came running down the stairs. "Heah's Miss Jinny."

"Lan' of goodness!" cried Lizbeth. "I knows Miss Jinny. Done seed her at Calve't House. How is you, Miss Jinny?"

"Very well, Lizbeth," said Virginia, listlessly sitting down on the hall sofa. "Can you give us some breakfast?"

"Yas'm," said Lizbeth, "jes' reckon we kin." She ushered them into a walnut dining room, big and high and sombre, with plush-bottomed chairs placed about—walnut also; for that was the fashion in those days. But the Captain had no sooner seated himself than he shot up again and started out.

"Where are you going, Lige?"

"To pay off the carriage driver," he said.

"Let him wait," said Virginia. "I'm going to the White House in a little while."

"What—what for?" he gasped.

"To see your Black Republican President," she replied, with alarming calmness.

"Now, Jinny," he cried, in excited appeal, "don't go doin' any such fool trick as that. Your Uncle Dan'l will be here this afternoon. He knows the President. And then the thing'll be fixed all right, and no mistake."

Her reply was in the same tone—almost a monotone—which she had used for three days. It made the Captain very uneasy, for he knew when she spoke in that way that her will was in it.

"And to lose that time," she answered, "may be to have him shot."

"But you can't get to the President without credentials," he objected.

"What," she flashed, "hasn't any one a right to see the President? You mean to say that he will not see a woman in trouble? Then all these pretty stories I hear of him are false. They are made up by the Yankees."

Poor Captain Lige! He had some notion of the multitude of calls upon Mr. Lincoln, especially at that time. But he could not, he dared not, remind her of the principal reason for this,—Lee's surrender and the approaching end of the war. And then the Captain had never seen Mr. Lincoln. In the distant valley of the Mississippi he had only heard of the President very conflicting things. He had heard him criticised and reviled and praised, just as is every man who goes to the White House, be he saint or sinner. And, during an administration, no man at a distance may come at a President's true character and worth. The Captain had seen Lincoln caricatured vilely. And again he had read and heard the pleasant anecdotes of which Virginia had spoken, until he did not know what to believe.

As for Virginia, he knew her partisanship to, and undying love for, the South; he knew the class prejudice which was bound to assert itself, and he had seen enough in the girl's demeanor to fear that she was going to demand rather than implore. She did not come of a race that was wont to bend the knee.

"Well, well," he said despairingly, "you must eat some breakfast first, Jinny."

She waited with an ominous calmness until it was brought in, and then she took a part of a roll and some coffee.

"This won't do," exclaimed the Captain. "Why, why, that won't get you halfway to Mr. Lincoln."

She shook her head, half smiling.

"You must eat enough, Lige," she said.

He was finished in an incredibly short time, and amid the protestations of Lizbeth and the yellow butler they got into the carriage again, and splashed and rattled toward the White House. Once Virginia glanced out, and catching sight of the bedraggled flags on the houses in honor of Lee's surrender, a look of pain crossed her face. The Captain could not repress a note of warning.

"Jinny," said he, "I have an idea that you'll find the President a good deal of a man. Now if you're allowed to see him, don't get him mad, Jinny, whatever you do."

Virginia stared straight ahead.

"If he is something of a man, Lige, he will not lose his temper with a woman."

Captain Lige subsided. And just then they came in sight of the house of the Presidents, with its beautiful portico and its broad wings. And they turned in under the dripping trees of the grounds. A carriage with a black coachman and footman was ahead of them, and they saw two stately gentlemen descend from it and pass the guard at the door. Then their turn came. The Captain helped her out in his best manner, and gave some money to the driver.

"I reckon he needn't wait for us this time, Jinny," said be. She shook her head and went in, he following, and they were directed to the anteroom of the President's office on the second floor. There were many people in the corridors, and one or two young officers in blue who stared at her. She passed them with her head high.

But her spirits sank when they came to the anteroom. It was full of all sorts of people. Politicians, both prosperous and seedy, full faced and keen faced, seeking office; women, officers, and a one-armed soldier sitting in the corner. He was among the men who offered Virginia their seats, and the only one whom she thanked. But she walked directly to the doorkeeper at the end of the room. Captain Lige was beside her.

"Can we see the President?" he asked.

"Have you got an appointment?" said the old man.

"No."

"Then you'll have to wait your turn, sir," he said, shaking his head and looking at Virginia. And he added. "It's slow work waiting your turn, there's so many governors and generals and senators, although the session's over. It's a busy time, miss."

Virginia went very close to him.

"Oh, can't you do something?" she said. And added, with an inspiration, "I must see him. It's a matter of life and death."

She saw instantly, with a woman's instinct, that these words had had their effect. The old man glanced at her again, as if demurring.

"You're sure, miss, it's life and death?" he said.

"Oh, why should I say so if it were not?" she cried.

"The orders are very strict," he said. "But the President told me to give precedence to cases when a life is in question. Just you wait a minute, miss, until Governor Doddridge comes out, and I'll see what I can do for you. Give me your name, please, miss."

She remained standing where she was. In a little while the heavy door opened, and a portly, rubicund man came out with a smile on his face. He broke into a laugh, when halfway across the room, as if the memory of what he had heard were too much for his gravity. The doorkeeper slipped into the room, and there was a silent, anxious interval. Then he came out again.

"The President will see you, miss."

Captain Lige started forward with her, but she restrained him.

"Wait for me here, Lige," she said.

She swept in alone, and the door closed softly after her. The room was a big one, and there were maps on the table, with pins sticking in them. She saw that much, and then—!

Could this fantastically tall, stooping figure before her be that of the President of the United States? She stopped, as from the shock he gave her. The lean, yellow face with the mask-like lines all up and down, the unkempt, tousled hair, the beard—why, he was a hundred times more ridiculous than his caricatures. He might have stood for many of the poor white trash farmers she had seen in Kentucky—save for the long black coat.

"Is—is this Mr. Lincoln?" she asked, her breath taken away.

He bowed and smiled down at her. Somehow that smile changed his face a little.

"I guess I'll have to own up," he answered.

"My name is Virginia Carvel," she said. "I have come all the way from St. Louis to see you."

"Miss Carvel," said the President, looking at her intently, "I have rarely been so flattered in my life. I—I hope I have not disappointed you."

Virginia was justly angry.

"Oh, you haven't," she cried, her eyes flashing, "because I am what you would call a Rebel."

The mirth in the dark corners of his eyes disturbed her more and more. And then she saw that the President was laughing.

"And have you a better name for it, Miss Carvel?" he asked. "Because I am searching for a better name—just now."

She was silent—sternly silent. And she tapped her foot on the carpet. What manner of man was this? "Won't you sit down?" said the President, kindly. "You must be tired after your journey." And he put forth a chair.

"No, thank you," said Virginia; "I think that I can say what I have come to say better standing."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's not strange. I'm that way, too. The words seem to come out better. That reminds me of a story they tell about General Buck Tanner. Ever heard of Buck, Miss Carvel? No? Well, Buck was a character. He got his title in the Mormon war. One day the boys asked him over to the square to make a speech. The General was a little uneasy.

"'I'm all right when I get standing up, Liza,' he said to his wife. Then the words come right along. Only trouble is they come too cussed fast. How'm I going to stop 'em when I want to?'

"'Well, I du declare, Buck,' said she, 'I gave you credit for some sense. All you've got to do is to set down. That'll end it, I reckon.'

"So the General went over to the square and talked for about an hour and a half, and then a Chicago man shouted to him to dry up. The General looked pained.

"'Boys,' said he, 'it's jest every bit as bad for me as it is for you. You'll have to hand up a chair, boys, because I'm never going to get shet of this goldarned speech any anther way.'"

Mr. Lincoln had told this so comically that Virginia was forced to laugh, and she immediately hated herself. A man who could joke at such a time certainly could not feel the cares and responsibilities of his office. He should have been a comedian. And yet this was the President who had conducted the war, whose generals had conquered the Confederacy. And she was come to ask him a favor. Virginia swallowed her pride.

"Mr. Lincoln," she began, "I have come to talk to you about my cousin, Colonel Clarence Colfax."

"I shall be happy to talk to you about your cousin, Colonel Colfax, Miss Carvel. Is he your third or fourth cousin?"

"He is my first cousin," she retorted.

"Is he in the city?" asked Mr. Lincoln, innocently. "Why didn't he come with you?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?" she cried. "He is Clarence Colfax, of St. Louis, now a Colonel in the army of the Confederate States."

"Which army?" asked Mr. Lincoln. Virginia tossed her head in exasperation.

"In General Joseph Johnston's army," she replied, trying to be patient. "But now," she gulped, "now he has been arrested as a spy by General Sherman's army."

"That's too bad," answered Mr. Lincoln.

"And—and they are going to shoot him."

"That's worse," said Mr. Lincoln, gravely. "But I expect he deserves it."

"Oh, no, he doesn't," she cried. "You don't know how brave he is! He floated down the Mississippi on a log, out of Vicksburg, and brought back thousands and thousands of percussion caps. He rowed across the river when the Yankee fleet was going down, and set fire to De Soto so that they could see to shoot."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's a good starter." Then he looked thoughtful.

"Miss Carvel," said he, "that argument reminds me of a story about a man I used to know in the old days in Illinois. His name was McNeil, and he was a lawyer.

"One day he was defending a prisoner for assault and battery before Judge Drake.

"'Judge, says McNeil, 'you oughtn't to lock this man up. It was a fair fight, and he's the best man in the state in a fair fight. And, what's more, he's never been licked in a fair fight in his life.'

"'And if your honor does lock me up,' the prisoner put in, 'I'll give your honor a thunderin' big lickin' when I get out.'

"The Judge took off his coat.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, 'it's a powerful queer argument, but the Court will admit it on its merits. The prisoner will please to step out on the grass.'"

This time Virginia contrived merely to smile. She was striving against something, she knew not what. Her breath was coming deeply, and she was dangerously near to tears. Why? She could not tell. She had come into this man's presence despising herself for having to ask him a favor. The sight of his face she had ridiculed. Now she could not look into it without an odd sensation. What was in it? Sorrow? Yes, that was nearest it.

What had the man done? Told her a few funny stories—given quizzical answers to some of her questions. Quizzical, yes; but she could not be sure then there was not wisdom in them, and that humiliated her. She had never conceived of such a man. And, be it added gratuitously, Virginia deemed herself something of an adept in dealing with men.