"No, they never do; lyin' 's their trade."
"Then you suppose they're whistling now to keep up their courage? But let us see what they say. Oblige me with some of your currency."
He kindly gave me three dollars for one, and ringing the bell, I soon had the five dingy half-sheets which every morning, "Sundays excepted," hold up this busy world, "its fluctuations and its vast concerns," to the wondering view of beleaguered Richmond.
"Dey's fifty cents apiece, Massa," said the darky, handing me the papers, and looking wistfully on the poor specimen of lithography which remained after the purchase; "what shill I do wid dis?"
"Oh! keep it. I'd give you more, but that's all the lawful money I have about me."
He hesitated, as if unwilling to take my last half-dollar; but self soon got the better of him. He pocketed the shin-plaster, and said nothing; but "Poor gentleman! I's sorry for you! Libin' at do Spotswood, and no money about you!" was legible all over his face.
We opened the papers, and, sure enough, General Grant was dead, and laid out in dingy sheets, with a big gun firing great volleys over him! The cannon which that morning thundered Glory! Hallelujah! through the columns of the "Whig" and the "Examiner" no doubt brought him to life again. No such jubilation, I believe, disgraced our Northern journals when Stonewall Jackson fell.
Breakfast over, the Colonel and I packed our portmanteaus, and sat down to the intellectual repast. It was a feast, and we enjoyed it. I always have enjoyed the Richmond editorials. If I were a poet, I should study them for epithets. Exhausting the dictionary, their authors ransack heaven, earth, and the other place, and into one expression throw such a concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself. But the dictator endures it like a philosopher. "He lets it pass," said Judge Ould to me, "like the idle wind, which it is."
At last, ten o'clock—the hour when we were to set out from Dixie—struck from a neighboring steeple, and I laid down the paper, and listened for the tread of the Judge on the stairs. I had heard it often, and it had always been welcome, for he is a most agreeable companion, but I had not listened for it till then. Then I waited for it as "they that watch for the morning," for he was to deliver us from the "den of lions,"—from "the hold of every foul and unclean thing." Ten, twenty, thirty minutes I waited, but he did not come! Why was he late, that prompt man, who was always "on time,"—who put us through the streets of Richmond the night before on a trot, lest we should be a second late at our appointment? Did he mean to bake us brown with the mid-day sun? or had the mules overslept themselves, or moved their quarters still farther out of town? Well, I didn't know, and it was useless to speculate, so I took up the paper, and went to reading again. But the stinging editorials had lost their sting, and the pointed paragraphs, though sharper than a meat-axe, fell on me as harmless as if I had been encased in a suit of mail.
At length eleven o'clock sounded, and I took out my watch to count the minutes. One, two, three,—how slow they went! Four, five,—ten,—fifteen,—twenty! What was the matter with the watch? Even at this day I could affirm on oath that it took five hours for that hour-hand to get round to twelve. But at last it got there, and then—each second seeming a minute, each minute an hour—it crept slowly on to one; but still no Judge appeared! Why did he not come? The reason was obvious. The mules were "quartered six miles out of town," because he had to see Mr. Davis before letting us go. And Davis had heard of my nocturnal rambling, and concluded we had come as spies. Or he had, from my cross-questioning the night before, detected my main object in coming to Dixie. Either way my doom was sealed. If we were taken as spies, it was hanging. If held on other grounds, it was imprisonment; and ten days of Castle Thunder, in my then state of health, would have ended my mortal career.