A beautiful girl pushed her way to Jennie's side and lifted a handful of snowdrops.
"Please put these on little Joe," she said wistfully. "I knew him so well."
With a sob the child turned and fled. Jennie never learned her name. She turned to the grave again, her gaze fixed on the striking figure of the grief-stricken father, bareheaded, straight as an arrow, his fine face silhouetted against the shining Southern sky. The mother stood back amid the shadows, in her somber wrappings, her tall figure drooped in pitiful grief.
The leader turned quickly from his personal sorrows to those of his country, his indomitable courage rising to greater heights as dangers thickened.
Two weeks later General Sheridan attempted what Dahlgren tried and failed to accomplish.
The President hurried from his office to his home, seized his pistols, mounted his horse and rode out to join Generals Gracie and Ransom who were placing their skeleton brigades to repulse the attack.
The crack of rifles could be distinctly heard from the Executive Mansion.
The mother called her children to prayers. As little Jeff knelt he raised his chubby face and said with solemn earnestness:
"You had better have my pony saddled, and let me go out and help father—we can pray afterwards!"
In driving Sheridan's cavalry back from Richmond General Stuart fell at Yellow Tavern mortally wounded—the bravest of the brave—a full Major General who had won immortal fame at thirty-one years of age. His beautiful wife, the daughter of a Union General, Philip St. George Cooke, could not reach his bedside before he breathed his last.