Toward the close of the day, when already hooded and cloaked for the onward journey, I was informed that Eugenia was dead: her father had received but her parting breath. The dispatch was sent for the information of those who had shown such sympathy for the grief-stricken father. I stepped over to the colonel's rooms, where I knew Phrony was. She was sitting on a little trunk by the fire, with her apron over her head, and her body bent forward. "Then you know it, Phrony?" I asked. "Yes, yes; knowed it all along, Miss. Hadn't never no one to take care of her but her old mammy! Oh, my chile! my chile! my little chile! And she's done gone died, without her mammy! Oh, my chile! my chile!" I tried to speak kindly to her, but my sobs choked me. I looked out of the window, but there was no light there. The snow was falling to the ground in dogged, sullen silence, and the wind, as though tired out with long, useless resistance, only moaned fitfully at times, when clamoring vainly for admission at the closed windows. Was it not well with the soul just gone to rest? Was it not better with her than with us--with me--who must still wander forth again, out into the snow, and the cold, and the night? "Oh, my chile! my chile!" sobbed the woman, so black of face, but true of heart; "if I could only have died, and gone to heaven, and left you with Massa Harry! Oh, Miss Anne! Miss Anne! what made you take my chile away from me?" "It is only for a little while that you will be parted from her, Phrony," I said. "Bress de Lord! Yes, I'll soon be with my little chile again. But she's dead now, and I can't never see her no more. Oh, my chile! my chile!" I closed the door softly, for I heard the warning cry of the coachman who was to take us to the outgoing train. _MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN NEW MEXICO._ On a warm, pleasant afternoon in the latter part of August, 1866, our command reached the post to which it had been assigned--Fort Bayard, New Mexico. Our ambulance was driven to the top of a little hill, where I had leisure to admire the singular beauty of the surrounding country, while my husband was superintending the pitching of the tent.