And Mrs. Clemm?
When she received Poe's letter bidding her to expect him at Fordham that week, she hastened thither to set her house in order for his reception. Day after day she watched and waited, but he did not come. And at length, when the week had passed, she one evening sat alone in the little cottage around which and through the naked branches of the cherry tree the October wind was sighing, and in anguish of spirit wrote to "Annie":
"Eddie is dead—dead."
CHAPTER XXXI.
AFTER THE WAR.
In the fall of 1865—the year which saw the conclusion of the unhappy war—I returned to Richmond and to my old home of Talavera, which I had not seen in four years.
What a shock to me was the first sight of it! In place of the pleasant, smiling home, there stood a bare and lonely house in the midst of encircling fortifications, still bristling with dismantled gun-carriages. Every outbuilding had disappeared. All the beautiful trees which had made it so attractive—even the young cedar of Lebanon, which had been our pride—were gone; greenhouses, orchard, vineyard, everything, had been swept away, leaving only a dead level overgrown with broom-straw, amidst which were scattered rusted bayonets and a few hardy plants struggling through the trampled ground. The place was no longer "Talavera," but "Battery 10."
In this desolate abode I remained some time, awaiting the arrival of our scattered family, and with no protectors save a faithful old negro couple. Each evening we would barricade as well as we could the entrance to the fort, as some slight protection against the hordes of newly freed negroes who roamed the country, living on whatever they could pick up.