One morning I had mechanically dressed baby George and had taken him to the window to hear the spring sounds and breathe the spring balm and catch the sunshine's dripping gold wreathing the top of the quivering blossoms of the magnolia and tulip-trees.

It was the time when the orchestra of the year is in perfect accord, when all the world is vocal, when the birds sing of love, the buds and blossoms of joy, the grains and grasses of hope and faith, and when each rustle of wind makes a chime of vital resonance.

Through the quiver and curl of leaves and perfume of flowers and soft undertone of dawn-winds came the words, "Whoa, Lucy; whoa, little girl!"

Oh, those tones, those words, that voice thrilled my heart so that I wonder it did not burst from very gladness! Such joy, such gratitude as flooded my soul only the Giver of all good can know! All the privation and starvation and blood-stains of the past four years, all the woes and trials, griefs and fears, of those last dreadful days were swept away by those blessed, precious-words, "Whoa, Lucy!" spoken in my husband's tender tones to his horse.

I could not wait to go down stairs in the regular way; it was too slow. So I slid down the bannisters with my baby in my arms and ran out upon the porch just as my Soldier came around the rosebushes that Mr. Lincoln had described, and which had just budded out. Baby and I were both in my Soldier's arms almost before Lucy had been given into the hands of the hostler. I do not know how to describe the peace, the bliss of that moment—it is too deep and too sacred to be translated into words. I think that it is akin to the feeling that will come to me in the hereafter, when I have gone through all these dark days of privation and of starvation of heart and soul here, victorious, and at last am safe within the golden gates and, waiting, and listening, shall hear again the voice that said, "Whoa, Lucy!" here, bidding me welcome there as I welcomed him after the perilous waiting.

All through the war Lucy had brought my Soldier to me. Spirited and beautiful, she had many times carried him twenty miles in an evening to see me, sometimes through dangers greater than battle. Lucy was not his war-horse. She was the little thoroughbred chestnut mare my Soldier always rode when he came to see me. His "peace-saddle," his "love-pony," he called her. Bob, the General's valet, would say, "Dat hoss Lucy she Marse George's co'tin' filly; and you dares'nt projick wid dat hoss, needer, kase Marse George is mos' as 'especkful to her as ef she was sho' 'miff real lady folks." The horse my Soldier used in battle he called "Old Black," a steady, sure-footed, strong, fearless animal that, though obedient to his slightest touch or command, allowed no one else, on peril of death, to mount her.

We had no plans for the future. Our home on the James had been burned at the command of Butler, so we decided to go to my father's plantation on the Chuckatuck, in Nansemond County, Virginia, a difficult thing to do, for the railroads had been torn up and no boats were running. The little town of Chuckatuck was about thirty miles from Norfolk, diagonally opposite Newport News, and after the evacuation of Norfolk by the Southern Army all that part of the country was neutral ground, being occupied one day by Federal troops and another by Confederate. Lying thus between the two lines, a constant warfare was carried on by the scouts of both armies, making it a dangerous region for travel. I had not been home since my marriage and we knew that the loving welcome which awaited us there had but increased in warmth for the long absence. Nature's great larder, the Chuckatuck Creek, ran but a stone's throw from the back door, supplying with but little labor terrapin, fish, oysters and crabs in abundance.

On the afternoon of the second day after my Soldier's return, while we were trying to plan a way to go, my little brother Johnny came running in, saying:

"Sister, I saw riding by the door just now that same Yankee who came here to see you the other day, and who said he was brother George's friend. He knew me and asked how you were, and how's the baby."

"Oh, I forgot; I must let you know all about it," I said, and told my Soldier of the visitor who had called before he came back. When I had finished his gray eyes filled with tears and looking at the card he said tenderly:

"Dear old Suckley—dear old fellow—so true!"

I stooped and took my Soldier's head in both my hands, and raising it up gazed searchingly into his earnest, loving eyes to see how he could possibly speak so affectionately of a Yankee.

"You, too, have that same kind of 'off-duty' feeling that this Yankee doctor spoke of having," I said with surprise, and rather disrespectfully for me, I am afraid.

"I must find the dear old fellow," my Soldier said, graciously overlooking my smallness of spirit. Excusing himself and taking leave of baby and me, he went out at once. In a little while he returned, saying:

"It is very fortunate for us, little one, that I went out when I did. Suckley goes down the river to-morrow to Norfolk in the surgeon-general's steamer, and he has kindly invited us to go with him, dear old big-hearted bug-catcher! Come, let us lose no time. Let us hurry and get our little traps together and be ready. We will not say anything about our plans to anyone till to-morrow morning, when we can announce our intentions and say our good-byes simultaneously."

Not only had this Yankee officer, in his "off-duty" feeling for my Soldier, kindly volunteered to transport us to our home, but to carry our trunks and horses, in fact, all we had, which, alas! was very, very little. Most of our worldly possessions—all of our bridal presents, linen, library, pictures, silver, furniture, harp, piano, china, everything except a few clothes—had been stored at Kent, Payne & Company's, and had been burned in the awful fire the night of the evacuation of Richmond.

The General's staff had, one by one, come in during the day from field and camp, and all breakfasted with us for the last time next morning in the old Pickett home. I observed that each wore a blue strip tied like a sash about the waist. It was the old headquarters flag, they explained, the flag of Virginia, saved from surrender and torn into strips by my Soldier to be kept in remembrance. By our door was a rose-bush full of white bloom called, because of its hardihood and early blossoming, the Frost-Rose. It had been planted by my Soldier's mother. He broke off some of the buds, put one in my hair and one in the button-hole of each of his officers. Then for the first time tears came, and the men who had been closer than brothers for four long years clasped hands in silence and parted.

The second social parting was sad, too, for they had taken me, "the child wife," into their lives twenty months before and they all loved me and called me "Sister." Their pride in each other and in their command, the perils that together they had endured, the varied experiences of good times and bad, had bound them together in links stronger than steel.

In spite of the partings, the loss of our cause, our disappointment and poverty, there was a sweet, restful, peaceful feeling of thankfulness in my heart and gratitude because the war was over, my husband had been spared and belonged now only to me; we were going home together, free from intrusion, to live our own lives.