The craunching of many feet upon the gravel walk,—the feet of strong, earnest men. And every now and then women passed, with faces pale but resolute. And here, close beside her, a mob of boys, with eager eyes, sweep across the greensward, unmindful of the injunction to keep off the grass. Movement everywhere. The very air of the peaceful little park seemed to palpitate. Then a sudden hush! She turned the page and read,— “It is not probable that we shall ever meet again, and I therefore bid you an eternal farewell.” A shiver ran through her frame. A moment afterwards she leaped from her seat with a piercing shriek; for almost at the very instant that those cruel words froze her heart a terrific sound smote upon her ear. A few feet from where she sat the fierce throats of cannon proclaimed to the city and the world that old Virginia was no longer one of the United States of America. CHAPTER LXVI. Four years have passed since our story opened, and the autumn of 1864 is upon us. For more than three years Virginia has been devastated by war. Most of Leicester’s pleasant homes have been broken up. My grandfather, however, trusting to his gray hairs, had remained at Elmington. The Poythresses were refugees in Richmond. Charley, who was now a major, commanding a battalion of artillery in the army defending Richmond, had, two months before, been taken in an ambulance-wagon to Mr. Carter’s. A bullet had passed through his body, but he was now convalescent. Any bright morning you might see him sunning himself in the garden. The house was crowded to overflowing with refugee relatives and friends from the invaded districts. And illumined by a baby. “He was born the very day I was wounded,” said Charley. “I remember how anxious I was to see him before I died.” “I knew you wouldn’t die,” said Alice; “and you didn’t!” “I am here,” said Charley. So, fair reader, Charley, in the last week of September, 1864, was a father two months old. As for the baby (and I hereby set the fashion of introducing one or more into every romance[1]), his mother had already discovered whom he was like. He was a Carter, every inch of him, especially his nose. But he had his father’s sense of humor,—there was not the slightest doubt of _that_. For when Charley, who, in speaking to the infant, always alluded to himself in those words,—when Charley, chucking him gingerly under the chin, would ask him what he thought of his venerable p-p-p-p-pop, he could be seen to smile, with the naked eye. To smile that jerky, sudden-spreading, sudden-shrinking smile of babyhood. You see it,—’tis gone! Ah, can it be that even then we dimly discern how serious a world this is to be born into! Major Frobisher’s battalion was in front of Richmond. The Don and I were under General Jubal Early, in the lower valley,—he a captain in command of the skirmishers of the Stonewall Division, I a staff-officer of the same rank.