uch about her beauty, a description of
her dress, and the distinction of her manner and appearance. The
President himself, it said, was charmed with her, and departing from his
usual cold reserve gave her graceful compliments.

This new reading of the newspaper only added more impetus to his speed
and on the afternoon of the same day he reached the railroad station.
Early the next morning he entered Richmond.

His heart, despite its recurrent troubles, was light, for he was coming
home once more.

The streets were but slightly changed--perhaps a little more bareness
and leanness of aspect, an older and more faded look to the clothing of
the people whom he passed, but the same fine courage shone in their
eyes. If Richmond, after nearly four years of fighting, heard the guns
of the foe once more, she merely drew tighter the belt around her lean
waist and turning her face toward the enemy smiled bravely.

The President received the despatch bearer in his private room, looking
taller, thinner and sterner than ever. Although a Kentuckian by birth,
he had been bred in the far South, but had little of that far South
about him save the dress he wore. He was too cold, too precise, too free
from sudden emotion to be of the Gulf Coast State that sent him to the
capital. Prescott often reflected upon the odd coincidence that the
opposing Presidents, Lincoln and Davis, should have been produced by
the same State, Kentucky, and that the President of the South should be
Northern in manner and the President of the North Southern in manner.

Mr. Davis read the despatches while their bearer, at his request, waited
by. Prescott knew the hopeless tenor of those letters, but he could see
no change in the stern, gray face as its owner read them, letter after
letter. More than a half-hour passed and there was no sound in the room
save the rustling of the paper as the President turned it sheet by
sheet. Then in even, dry tones he said:

"You need not wait any longer, Captain Prescott; you have done your part
well and I thank you. You will remain in Richmond until further orders."

Prescott saluted and went out, glad to get into the free air again. He
did not envy the responsibility of a president in war time, whether the
president of a country already established or of one yet tentative. He
hurried home, and it was his mother herself who responded to the sound
of the knocker--his mother, quiet, smiling and undemonstrative as of
old, but