s
and a corkscrew with the money.

Well, I did not scold Julia. It was certainly no fault of hers that I
was walking on the lower shelf of her cedar closet. I told her to make
a parcel of the things, and the first time we went to drive I hove the
whole shapeless heap into the river, without saying mass for them.

But let no man think, or no woman, that this was the end of troubles. As
I look back on that winter, and on the spring of 1865 (I do not mean the
steel spring), it seems to me only the beginning. I got out on crutches
at last; I had the office transferred to my house, so that Lafarge and
Hepburn could work there nights, and communicate with me when I could
not go out; but mornings I hobbled up to the Department, and sat with
the Chief, and took his orders. Ah me! shall I soon forget that damp
winter morning, when we all had such hope at the office. One or two of
the army fellows looked in at the window as they ran by, and we knew
that they felt well; and though I would not ask Old Wick, as we had
nick-named the Chief, what was in the wind, I knew the time had come,
and that the lion meant to break the net this time. I made an excuse to
go home earlier than usual; rode down to the house in the Major's
ambulance, I remember; and hopped in, to surprise Julia with the good
news, only to find that the whole house was in that quiet uproar which
shows that something bad has happened of a sudden.

"What is it, Chloe?" said I, as the old wench rushed by me with a bucket
of water.

"Poor Mr. George, I 'fraid he's dead, sah!"

And there he really was,--dear handsome, bright George Schaff,--the
delight of all the nicest girls of Richmond; he lay there on Aunt
Eunice's bed on the ground floor, where they had brought him in. He was
not dead,--and he did not die. He is making cotton in Texas now. But he
looked mighty near it then. "The deep cut in his head" was the worst I
then had ever seen, and the blow confused everything. When McGregor got
round, he said it was not hopeless; but we were all turned out of the
room, and with one thing and another he got the boy out of the swoon,
and somehow it proved his head was not broken.

No, but poor George swears to this day it were better it had been, if it
could only have been broken the right way and on the right field. For
that evening we heard that everything had gone wrong in the surprise.
There we had been waiting for one of those early fogs, and at last the
fog had come