it was five o'clock! The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this
time. I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk. Lafarge did his prettiest
in rushing to the telegraph. But no! A freshet on the Chowan River, or a
raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire
for that night. And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the
navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.

"But perhaps the duplicate got through?" No, breathless reader, the
duplicate did not get through. The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the
Ino. I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber's hands, in Washington. Well, all
I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate
government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two
hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium. So
much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the
cedar closet, up stairs.

"What was the bit of wire?"

Well, it was not telegraph wire. If it had been, it would have broken
when it was not wanted to. Don't you know what it was? Go up in your own
cedar closet, and step about in the dark, and see what brings up round
your ankles. Julia, poor child, cried her eyes out about it. When I got
well enough to sit up, and as soon as I could talk and plan with her,
she brought down seven of these old things, antiquated Belmontes and
Simplex Elliptics, and horrors without a name, and she made a pile of
them in the bedroom, and asked me in the most penitent way what she
should do with them.

"You can't burn them" said she; "fire won't touch them. If you bury them
in the garden, they come up at the second raking. If you give them to
the servants, they say, 'Thank-e, missus,' and throw them in the back
passage. If you give them to the poor, they throw them into the street
in front, and do not say, 'Thank-e,' Sarah sent seventeen over to the
sword factory, and the foreman swore at the boy, and told him he would
flog him within an inch of his life if he brought any more of his sauce
there; and so--and so," sobbed the poor child, "I just rolled up these
wretched things, and laid them in the cedar closet, hoping, you know,
that some day the government would want something, and would advertise
for them. You know what a good thing; I made out of the bottle corks."

In fact, she had sold our bottle corks for four thousand two hundred and
sixteen dollars of the first issue. We afterward bought two umbrella