“I would call this meeting and parting strange, if any thing were strange in this world!” he said, “but nothing astonishes me, or moves me, as of old! The devil has brought it about! he put a knife in my hands once! to-night he brings me face to face with you and my boy-brother--and makes you curse and renounce me! Well, so be it! have your will! Henceforth I am really lost--my father!” And drawing his pistol, he coolly discharged barrel after barrel in the faces of the men rushing upon him; wheeled his horse, and dug the spurs into him; an instant afterward, with his sneering face turned over his shoulder, he had disappeared in the woods. Two hours afterward I was on my way to Petersburg. The enemy were already falling back from their adventurous attempt to seize the Southside road. In the morning they had retired across the Rowanty, and disappeared. So ended that heavy blow at Lee’s great war-artery. [Illustration: THE FLIGHT] BOOK IV. THE PHANTOMS. I. RICHMOND BY THE THROAT. I was again back at the “Cedars,” after the rapid and shifting scenes which I have endeavored to place before the reader. The tragic incidents befalling the actors in this drama, had most absorbed my attention; but sitting now in my tent, with the newspapers before me, I looked at the fight in which I had participated, from the general and historic point of view. That heavy advance on the Boydton road, beyond Lee’s right, had been simultaneous with a determined assault on the Confederate left, north of James River, and on Lee’s centre opposite Petersburg; and now the extracts from Northern journals clearly indicated that the movement was meant to be decisive. “I have Richmond by the throat!” General Grant had telegraphed; but there was good ground to believe that the heavy attack, and the eloquent dispatch, were both meant to “make capital” for the approaching Presidential election. These memoirs, my dear reader, are written chiefly to record some incidents which I witnessed during the war. I have neither time nor space for political comments. But I laid my hand yesterday, by accident, on an old number of the _Examiner_ newspaper; and it chanced to contain an editorial on the fight just described, with some penetrating views on the “situation” at that time. Shall I quote a paragraph from the yellow old paper? It will be bitter--we were all bitter in those days! though to-day we are so fraternal and harmonious. With his trenchant pen, Daniel pierced to the core of the matter; and the paper may give some idea of the spirit of the times. I could fancy the great satirist sitting in his lonely study, and penning the lines I shall quote, not without grim smiles at his own mordant humor. Here is the slip I cut out. The old familiar heading may recall those times to some readers, as clearly as the biting sentences, once read, perhaps, by the camp-fire. * * * * * DAILY EXAMINER. * * * * * MONDAY MORNING OCT. 31, 1864. * * * * *