"Those are minie balls, shot from rifles of equal caliber. And they met precisely equidistant to a hair. This is very interesting, but it is not the only one in the world. I have seen one other, picked up at Vicksburg. Where was this found, and when?" he asked, as he handed the relic back to me. "At Petersburg, possibly."
"Yes," I answered; "but not when you were shelling the city. It was picked up on our farm after the last fight."
He looked at me with a humorous twinkle in his eye. "Now look here," he said, "don't you go about telling people I shelled Petersburg."
A short time before his death, just before he was taken to Mount McGregor, he dictated a note to me, sending his kind regards to my general, and saying he remembered with pleasure his talk with me over a cup of tea.
There is something very touching in all this as I remember it now—his illness so bravely borne. His death occurred not very long afterward. No widow ever mourned more tenderly than did Mrs. Grant. I saw her only once before she went to sleep beside him in the marble temple on the riverside, and she touched me by her patient demeanor. I had a friend very close to her in her later days to whom she loved to talk of her general,—when they met, how he proposed to her. They were riding together, crossing a rough place in the road. Her horse stumbled and threw her. The general caught her in his arms and said he was "glad to safeguard her then, and would be proud to do so to the end." She said when he came on his wooing there were members of her family who looked askance at the undersized chap. "Nothing of him but eyes and epaulets," Longstreet was quoted as saying of him one evening at a tea-and-toast euchre party. This seems to have been the opinion of some of Julia Dent's people, but not of her far-seeing mother, to whom the maiden's dismay was confided. "Julia, you should marry that young officer, say what they will about his clumsiness and awkward ways! He is far above any of the young fellows who come here. He will one day be President of the United States."
My sisters at the South would, in these early days, have resented these words of appreciation of General and Mrs. Grant. Not one iota the less did my allegiance fail to my dear commander in his modest tomb, guarded perpetually night and day by a son of Virginia, because I could perceive the tender side, the heroic side, of a foeman worthy of his steel.
CHAPTER XXXVII
In October, 1883, General Pryor was sent to England, as counsel to defend Patrick O'Donnell, who had been indicted for the murder of James Carey, and was now imprisoned in London. Carey had been one of the leaders of the Irish "Invincibles" in 1881, and was an accomplice in the assassination of Mr. T. H. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phœnix Park. He was arrested on January 13, 1883, and turned queen's evidence. In order to escape the vengeance of the "Invincibles," he was secretly shipped for the Cape under the name of "Power." His plan of escape was discovered, and he was secretly followed by Patrick O'Donnell, who shot him before the vessel reached its destination.
The prisoner was an American citizen, and it was thought proper by some of his personal friends to have American counsel assist the local lawyers in his defence. There was no political signification in General Pryor's being retained. He was aware that objection would be urged against his appearance in an English court. There was no precedent for his encouragement. The case of Judah P. Benjamin did not apply. Mr. Benjamin had been born a British subject and had "eaten his dinners" at the Temple. Only by an act of courtesy on the part of the judge could General Pryor hope for a hearing. He wrote me, en route, on board the Scythia, October 17:—
"An Irish barrister on board has been my most constant companion,—a very intelligent gentleman is he,—and I am assured by him that I cannot be admitted to appear in Court, the rule of Court excluding from practice any but members of the Bar. This does not surprise me. I can be usefully employed in consultation and suggestion. I have industriously read in the law of homicide, and on those topics I consider myself an expert."