He returned presently, bringing me a letter from my father. He waited as I opened it, and when I asked leave to read it, he said for answer, as if still thinking of our conversation:--
"Jones, my boy, there is a future for you. I can imagine circumstances in which your peculiar powers of memory would accomplish more genuine good than could a thousand bayonets; good night."
Before I went to bed I had written my father a long letter. Then, I lay down, oppressed with thought.
VI
THE USES OF INFIRMITY
"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."
--BROWNING.
The next morning Lydia was missing from the breakfast table. The Doctor said that she had gone to her room--which was at a friend's house in Georgetown--to rest. She had brought from Willis a request that I should come to see him.
"You are getting back to your normal condition," said the Doctor, "and if you do not object I shall drive you down."
On the way, the Doctor told me that alarm as to the safety of the capital had subsided. The army was reorganizing on the Virginia hills and was intrenching rapidly. Reënforcements were being hurried to Washington, and a new call for volunteers would at once be made. General McClellan would arrive in a few days; much was expected of his ability to create and discipline an army.