University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

One day towards the last of March of 1865, Cain
Smallin's appetite was immeasurably sharpened by untoward
events. The scouts had been recalled from
their operations on the Lower James. With Mrs. Parven
and family in charge, the party had made their
devious way to Petersburg and rejoined their regiment
on the Petersburg lines, after parting with the
wagons which contained the Lares of the Parvens, and
which drove on to Richmond to deposit the said Lares
in their city domicile.

Cain Smallin, provident man! was making biscuits.
His culinary facilities consisted of a (technically so-called)
skillet. A bas that upturned nose, thou French
cook! A skillet? What could not one cook, or do, in
or with a skillet? From a coffee-pot, to a Mambrino's
helmet to keep the infernal rain-strokes out of one's
eyes o' nights, the offices of the skillet ranged.

The skillet was the soldier's Lar.

Around Cain's fire reclined in various attitudes peculiar
to the old campaigner, Rübetsahl, Flemington, and
Aubrey. Of whom Flemington, as he lay flat on his

back, was singing with his whole soul a most pathetic
ditty, beginning:—
Aubrey was dreaming of fair Rebecca Parven, and
Rübetsahl read a letter.

Now, by direction of the perverse fates, it had come
about that, some days before the building of Cain
Smallin's fire, a wandering shell had fallen upon the
ground in that neighborhood, and had buried itself and
smothered out the fuse. Moreover, the treacherous
earth showed no sign of it, and Cain Smallin, being
doubtless under ban of the sisters three, had selected
the identical spot of the said burial for his culinary
operations.

Rübetsahl's letter was a long one, and an old one.
It bore date two or three months back. It was from
Ottilie.

“— So, I have told thee all. Friend, by that which
hath been — and from me to thee, could there be holier
oath of oaths than this? — I charge thee deal with me
mercifully.

“But there are yet more things I must say. Art
tired? Thou knowest we came here, to Richmond,
with Cranston, from Tennessee. Wilt thou wonder that
we came with one that seemed the murderer of our
friends and the destroyer of our home? Well, I wonder,
too; but what could we do? Despair had us; and
I wished that Felix might be near her brother.

“So we came, at last. Some days after we had been
at the American, Cranston came to our parlor.

“Ah, his countenance was so mournful, Rübetsahl!

“`I leave,' he said, `to-day.'

“`Well?' I said, after some pause; and yet I pitied
his sad, sad glance.

“`Ah,' he broke out, `you still believe I did it.
Think! Did I not save Felix from the flames?'

“`Yes.'

“`Did I not risk my life, defending yours, when we
were attacked on the borders by the ruffians?'

“`Yes.'

“`Am I not in hourly danger that I be taken and
hung for a spy? Have I even asked you not to betray
me?'

“`Yes, and no!'

“`Have I discharged all your commissions? Have
I found all your friends for you, and put you in communication
with them?'

“`Yes.'

“`You still believe,' said he, with sinking voice,
`that — that I did it?'

“He spoke to me, but gazed all the time upon Felix,
who sat near me.

“O Rübetsahl, was I wrong that I suffered my heart
to be a little touched?

“Felix said nothing.

“`Felix,' said I, `perhaps he is innocent.'

“Felix said nothing: would not even look towards
him.

“`At any rate, sir,' said I boldly, `we will give you
the justice of the courts — the benefit of a doubt.'

“`I thank you,' he said with grave courtesy, `for
even so much. Farewell!'

“`Farewell,' — but I did not take his hand, and Felix
still was dumb and vacantly gazing otherways. He
descended the stairs, slowly, with downcast face.
Shouldst thou meet him, be as I was to him: do not
kill him, do not kill him, for the sake of the doubt!

“I must also tell thee that Felix is again alive; for
she was surely dead, till three days since. The vacant
calm of her grief was immeasurably pathetic. Ah,
how I suffered!

“But, last Sunday, we went to church; for she would
follow me like — Du Himmel — like a dumb spaniel!
We arrived in time for the voluntary.

“Can it be that thou wast playing the organ that
day? I could have sworn it. It was our Chopin that
the organist played. As the first notes struck, Felix
shuddered, and her eyes began to enlarge and to grow
intelligent, and to gaze as if they saw something.
Presently the rigid lips trembled, and trembled; and a
tear, a blessed, blessed tear fell, and another, and then
burst a storm of weeping so passionate that I led her
from the church. Good friend, what a tempest was
there when we were returned to the hotel! I was terrified;
I feared her frame would go to pieces, like a
vessel! But she `rained her skies blue,' and was
afterwards calmer, and slept; and she is now my own
grave great-hearted Felix again. And she has thy
letter; — thou seest, I can write it!

And one more little corner to myself.

“God be praised! At length, I `lean upon our fair
Father, Christ!' How, and why, I know not, I care
not; but I lean, and am strong. `The wind bloweth
whither it listeth, and thou canst not tell.' Perhaps it

is because I am a necessity to Felix. To lavish upon
her all tender cares and caresses, — this is my aim of
life. And one lives not easily, nor long, thou knowest,
without an aim of life.

“Rübetsahl, perhaps thy heart will be a little lighter
for me, if I say again:

“God be praised!

O—.”

Rübetsahl slowly folded his letter, and drew another,
already well-worn, from his breast. Felix had learned
to “thee” and “thou” from German Ottilie, till it
was like mother-tongue to her.

“Thy letter is come,” she wrote, “and mine shall
meet it on the threshold like a hurrying kiss.

“And oh my king, my king, I do utterly love thee
— and having written so, this pen shall never write
another word, and I, this moment, cast it into the fire;
whose yearning flames fly upward, as to thee flies thy

“Felix.”

Cain Smallin sat, stiff-backed, upon the ground,
sternly regarding his packed circle of biscuits in the
skillet.

“How do they come on, Cain? Most done?” inquired
Aubrey, from the other side of the fire, relapsing
— how low, sweet Venus! — from his love-dream.

“Bully! brownin' a little, some of 'em. 'Bout ten
minutes, yit,” gloomily and sententiously replied the
mountaineer.

And what the devil are the next words?” sang
Flemington for the fortieth time.

The next words are lost to history, probably; inasmuch

as Vesuvius in petto suddenly opened a crater
immediately beneath Mr. Smallin's skillet; with consequences.
The buried shell had exploded. Aubrey,
being small, continued to gyrate for some time at varying
distances from the centre. Flemington, a long
man, rolled longitudinally to an amazing distance, and
with dizzy rapidity.

Cain Smallin, receiving impetus from his feet upward,
described six distinct and beautiful somersaults — six —
and a half. The result of the half being that, at the
immediate period of stoppage, Smallin's nose was penetrating
the earth, and his eyes were sternly fixed upon
the same, as if he were upon the point of detecting
some agricultural secret of our ancient mother.

“Cain 's perusing the `volume of Nature!”' shouted
Aubrey, who had risen first.

“`Sermons in stones;' he 's reading one of 'em,”
echoed Flemington, holding his sides. Tweaking his
own nose, to get the dirt off, Mr. Smallin arose with a
dignity that struck awe into six admiring messes that
had assembled.

“Boys,” said he, in a broken voice of indignant but
mournful inquiry, “have any of ye seed the skillet?”