“‘As we go to press it is reported that Grant has met at Fort Pemberton a worse repulse than did Sherman at Chickasaw Bayou, the gallant Loring and his devoted band inflicting upon the invaders a signal defeat. Thousands were slain—’”
“Hm! Old Blizzard’s gallant all right, and we’re devoted all right, and they’re invaders all right, and we certainly made them clear out of the Yazoo Valley, but somehow I didn’t see those thousands slain! Newspapers always do exaggerate.”
“That’s true. Nature and education both. North and South—especially North. That New York paper, for instance, that we got from the picket at Chickasaw—”
“The one that said we tortured prisoners?”
“No. The one that said we mutilated the dead. They’re all Ananiases. Go on, Borrow.”
“‘Farragut has succeeded in running the batteries at Fort Hudson. The mouth of the Red River—’”
“We know all that. What ’re they doing in Virginia?”
“Marse Robert and Stonewall seem to be holding south bank of Rappahannock. Fighting Joe Hooker on the other side’s got something up his sleeve. He and ‘the finest army on the planet’ look like moving. The paper says Sedgwick’s tried a crossing below Fredericksburg, but that General Lee’s watching Ely and Germanna fords. Here’s an account of Kelly’s Ford and the death of Pelham—”
“Read that,” said the men.
Edward left them reading, listening, and making murmured comment. At a little distance rose a copse overrun with yellow jessamine. Entering this, he sat down at the foot of a cedar and, laying by the home letters and the letters from comrades, opened one written on thin, greyish paper, in a hand slender yet bold:—