did I see him again for some
fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning, and
I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a moment,
nor had he changed in any other outward way. He was, when others were
with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when
he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for hours gazing off into
space, his face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery;
and at night he would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I
did not know until I read his manuscript years afterward.

He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of
the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was
evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied.
As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent,
in fact he would not talk of them at all.

He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York, where
he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited him once a
year on the occasions of my trips to the New York market--my father and
I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia
at that time. Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage,
situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my last
visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed he was much occupied in
writing, I presume now, upon this manuscript.

He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he wished
me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a compartment
in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I would find his will
there and some personal instructions which he had me pledge myself to
carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal.
I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never understood
that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first
of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking me to
come to him at once. I had always been his favorite among the younger
generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the
morning of March 4,