But Mrs. Witcher insisted that he should try, and so the Captain condescended to make the experiment, after giving her a somewhat detailed account of his extensive family connection, and of an even larger circle of friends, which included the commanding Generals of all the armies and everybody else of note in the country besides. “Well, this suits me,” he said as he walked into the room assigned him. “Jim, who occupied this room last?” he asked the darky—whose name happened to be Paul. “Well, I forgits the gent’man’s name, he died in dis room.” “Did he? How?” “Jes’ so, suh. He died right in dat bed, ’caus I help’ to lay him out.” “Well, maybe I’ll die in it myself. See that the sheets are clean,” said Captain McRaffle, composedly. “What are you standing there gaping at? Do you suppose I mind a man’s dying? I’ve killed a hundred men.” “Suh!” “Yes, two hundred—and slept in a coffin myself to boot.” And the Captain turned on the negro so dark and saturnine a face that “Jim” withdrew in a hurry, and ten minutes later was informing the other negroes that there was a man in the house that had been dead and “done riz agin.” And this was the equipment with which Captain McRaffle began life as a resident of Brutusville. CHAPTER VII THE CARY CONFERENCE The meeting at Birdwood was a notable occasion. It was, in a way, the outward and visible sign of the return of peace. Someone said it looked like the old St. Ann congregation risen from the dead, to which Miss Thomasia added, that the gentlemen, at least, were now all immortal, and the General, with his hand on his heart, gallantly responded that the ladies had always been so. The speech, however, left some faces grave, for there were a number of vacant places that could not be forgotten. Jacquelin, under the excitement of his arrival, felt himself sufficiently restored and stimulated to join his mother and Aunt Thomasia, and be driven over to Birdwood, and though he suffered a good deal from the condition of the roads, yet when Blair ran forward and offered her shoulder for “his other crutch,” he felt as though a bad wound might after all have some compensations. Steve Allen was the life of the company. He had ridden over on his black horse, “Hot-Spur,” that, like himself, had been wounded several times in the last campaigns, though never seriously. He spent his time teasing Blair. He declared that Jacquelin was holding on to his crutch only to excite sympathy, and that his own greatest cause for hatred of the Yankees now was either that they had not shot him instead of Jack, or had not killed Jack, and he offered to go out and let anyone shoot him immediately for one single pitying glance like those he said Blair was lavishing on Jack.