the histories, to upset cabinets, to declare war, and occasionally to make peace.

But for Beatrix Esmond's beauty, the Pretender would have been king.

What Pitt owed to Pompadour we shall never very well know. Quebec and Calcutta certainly-perhaps, by her withdrawal from the Continental system, England's subsequent salvation from the clutch of Napoleon.

But it is an American woman I set out to describe-a Virginia girl fifteen years old-as she appeared in the spring of 1865, when Stoneman's Cavalry were scouring a section of her State, purged for four years as it had been of blood and treasure, food and raiment, to resist the restoration of a union in the rearing of which it lent such a mighty hand. This girl (Cornelia, her mother called her just then from the door of a high-gabled old brick house,) was standing in the front yard under the shadow of a Lombardy poplar, if that tree can be said to make a shadow, at four o'clock of a bright, blustery April afternoon in the spring of "the Surrender." All Southerners date from the Surrender. Perhaps they remember, pity it is, that England and France and the United States accorded them during the civil war the rights of belligerents in token of some very stubborn, well-won fighting.

Well, this girl, (how distinct is the memory of a very black eye that was fully lit up this particular afternoon, and made a colorless skin show some signs of blood elsewhere than on her lips, for they were the reddest of red, made so it may be by the contrast with their porcelain environment,) was looking from quite a height on the approach of a column of Union cavalry up a lane, which at first approaching the house was made to turn around a field, and so throw the homestead farther off from this the public highway. She had a boy visitor then, not quite her age, who was making his way home from a school, the session of which had been abruptly ended and the pupils scattered, by the news of the surrender of Lee, and the presence of the Union forces in the next county. His earthly all, a suit of

black cloth made by the most loving of old-fashioned mothers (he chose to fancy her such au one as they of Rome were in the time of Cincinnatus) from a remnant laid away at the time Sumter was fired upon, together with his linen and school books, (Dan Sloan had drawn pictures in the fly leaves of every one of them, and it was on that account chiefly that he did not leave them a spoil to the enemy,) were carried by him in a pillow-slip on which were his dear mother's initials, worked with a cunning hand in red thread. For two days he had trudged with this load on his back in company with straggling detachments of Lee's veterans, seeking their South-Western homes, all of them in good spirits, none cast down, and generally having a good word to say of Grant.

His food had been the boiled cow-peas, dried fruit, sorghum and corn-bread, which the ladies in the villages through which they passed had brought out on the sidewalks to the soldiers. For whenever a band of these entered a hamlet, the sad news of the 9th of April had set fair hands to work in devising some relief for hunger and high-strung hearts, to fashion words of hope and sympathy and encouragement. "You are not ashamed or afraid for what you have done, are you?" they would say in perfect confidence of the answer, to the roughest of the men; and one little girl, seeing our hero with them, cried out, "Oh look, what a poor little soldier that is! Mamma, give him some of that old black pea soup."

It was in this village that the boy first learned how near he was to the raiding party of East Tennessee bushwhackers, who trailed along in Stoneman's rear, though I have previously dignified them with the name of Union Cavalry. But one should not at this late day quarrel even with the worst of East Tennessee's contributions to the cause of the Union, remembering as every woman and child in south-west Virginia and the Carolinas must remember, how sorely disgraced was the name of Confederate soldier when borne by some of the men who claimed to belong to Generals Wheeler and Vaughan's commands of cavalry.

There was never a hope that among that array of freebooters would be found a claimant for the reward of $10,000 offered by a noted infantry commander of the South "for a dead man with his spurs on." Now for a school-boy of fourteen to be wedged up, as it were, in this manner between retreating squads of a rough soldiery, who were his friends, but like all soldiers callous and somewhat selfish, and an advancing squad of the enemy about whom he was hearing terrible and as it proved true accounts-this impressed him very painfully, though not with the feeling of fright, for he had no apprehension that any man, however brutal his disposition, would kill a boy. The dread was rather that he might in the hurly-burly then going on be called to the protection of some female in the absence of better guardianship and be inadequate for the task. There was a positive dearth of men in the country, excepting of course these passersby of Lee's, who were under parole, every mother's son of them, and this lad's disquiet arose not so much from apprehensions of what the Yankees would do, as from what the negroes might do. He had read fearful accounts in the newspapers of their excesses in Northern and Eastern Virginia, how all the old family ties, which were vainly believed to be hoops of iron and chains of steel, snapped on the instant a blue-coat hove in sight; how "Missus" was told good-bye in a "huff," and sometimes with rough insolence; how darker scenes had been enacted which it is not the province of these pages to record; and how that the protection which a civilized enemy usually affords the non-combatants was usually withdrawn in the very nick of time and seemingly with the knowledge that the camp-followers would do as devilishly as they did.

Uncertain whether to advance or remain, knowing no one, the mail facilities completely destroyed, heavy-hearted when he thought of home and the dear mother, ignorant whether the last of three gallant brothers sent off to fight the Union survived to protect her, he bitterly bemoaned ever taking the advice of his teacher to leave school. There at least the kind but homely old spinster, who had boarded twenty "sets" of boys,

would have given him shelter and soft words till either peace came or war took on a more auspicious look for the poor staggering Southland.

Musing thus and resting on the curb-stone of the village pavement, the cheery order to "march" was given by one of his soldier friends, who knew the value of the parole he carried and cared nothing if he met Stoneman's Brigade in the dark. Foot-sore as he was, his judgment dictated that he had better keep with his new acquaintances than trust to entire strangers, and so limping to keep up, he bade good-bye to ladies and cow-pea soup and left the row of bright faces shining under the foliage of the young sidewalk elms, to welcome the next band of Lee's men that might come in sight. Three miles out, the party waded a rapid river whose waters were almost as clear as those that lie in the home from which it came-the beautiful Blue Ridge.

The stones of its bed pained our little friend's poor feet while it cooled them, and once over it he tied his boots to his back and trudged along bare-foot. Not a mile from the river an old gentleman, shabbily mounted, asked the soldiers if they knew where the "raiders," as he called Stoneman's men, were, and noticing our friend's bare feet he asked what such a child was doing with the army.

The soldiers explained the connection he had with them, complimented his marching powers, but expressed the belief that he was about "gone up."

"What is your name, my young friend?" said the old horse

man.

"Moran, sir. Archie Moran. I am from Alabama-a son of ex-Governor Moran."

"I knew your father by reputation very well. You must not go any farther with your feet in that fix. That is my house," pointing to the high-gabled brick of which mention has before been made," and Brookwood can still entertain man and beast fairly well if the devil is to pay everywhere else, and I verily believe it is.—Gentlemen," to the soldiers, “what is to become of our country? Aren't we ruined? What do the army say about it?"

F

He was a very abrupt old fellow, this gray-beard, and took Archie's assent to what he said as a matter of course. He did not even wait for an answer from the soldiers, but continued, pointing with his riding switch to a young sergeant from the Carolinas, who at once introduced himself as Mr. Boud, "What are the Yankees going to do any way? You look to be posted."

The young fellow smiled and said, "Not very well, sir, I fear. Grant gave the men here all very good terms and treatment at Appomattox, but hell has broken loose at the North since that time. Abe Lincoln was killed, and they say it is doubtful whether the Yankees will stand up to any terms our Generals make with theirs. You have heard about old Abe's death, have n't you?"

“Not a word! not a word! I've heard nothing except that Lee had thrown up the sponge," replied the elderly man.

"Oh yes," continued Sergeant Bond, "they killed Lincoln and old Seward too-in a theatre, I believe, but I don't know the men's names that did it-Southern sympathizers I expect. As for me, I am going to the Trans-Mississippi department with Jeff Davis and Kirby Smith. I've got no parole and don't want one. If it gets too hot out there, why Mexico is handy, and I'd a d-d sight rather live under the French than under the Yankees. You don't catch me surrendering. I left the day before the Yankees came into Richmond, and have been half starved ever since, but never say die' is my slogan, and 'hurrah for Dixie.' Don't you say so too?"

66

"Yes," said the old man, you are right about it. Do a stand against Sherman?" "If he had Lee's men he could," said the Sergeant with pride and an evident huskiness of throat, "but those South-Western fellows have got no discipline and never did have any. The generals have been forever quarrelling with each other and the men lost confidence in them; but 'Old Joe' is all right and Jeff ought never to have removed him. You can bet he'll stop

we are all in the same boat; I guess

you think Joe Johnston can make