I bowed, feeling that the spirit of martyrdom was cooling within me.  The General continued: 

“I have sent for you, sir, that I might say to you, Go on in your present prudent and manly course, and while I command this department you are as safe as I am.”

There I stood, a whipped man, my pugnacity all gone, and the martyr’s crown away out of my reach.  I walked softly downstairs, after bidding the General an adieu in a manner in marked contrast to that in which I had greeted him at the beginning of the interview.  Now that it is all over, and the ocean winds have wailed their dirges for him so many long years, I would pay a humble tribute to the memory of as brave and knightly a man as ever wore epaulettes or fought under the stars and stripes.  He was of the type of Sidney Johnston, who fell at Shiloh, and of McPherson, who fell at Kennesaw—­all Californians; all Americans, true soldiers, who had a sword for the foe in fair fight in the open field, and a shield for woman, and for the noncombatant, the aged, the defenseless.  They fought on different sides to settle forever a quarrel that was bequeathed to their generation, but their fame is the common inheritance of the American people.  The reader is beginning to think I am digressing, but he will better understand what is to come after getting this glimpse of those stormy days in the sixties.

The guests at the Springs were about equally divided in their sectional sympathies.  The gentlemen were inclined to avoid all exciting discussions, but the ladies kept up a fire of small arms.  When the mails came in, and the latest news was read, comments were made with flashing eyes and flushed cheeks.

The Sabbath morning dawned without a cloud.  I awoke with the earliest song of the birds, and was out before the first rays of the sun had touched the mountaintops.  The coolness was delicious, and the air was filled with the sweet odors of aromatic shrubs and flowers, with a hint of the pine-forests and balsam-thickets from the higher altitudes.  Taking a breakfast solus, pocket-bible in hand I bent my steps up the gorge, often crossing the brook that wound its way among the thickets or sung its song at the foot of the great overhanging cliffs.  A shining trout would now and then flash like a silver bar for a moment above the shaded pools.  With light step a doe descending the mountain came upon me, and, gazing at me a moment or two with its soft eyes, tripped away.  In a narrow pass where the stream rippled over the pebbles between two great walls of rock, a spotted snake crossed my path, hurrying its movement in fright.  Fear not, humble ophidian.  The war declared between thee and me in the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis is suspended for this one day.  Let no creature die today but by the act of God.  Here is the lake.  How beautiful! how still!  A landslide had dammed the stream where it flowed between steep, lofty banks, backing the waters over a little valley three or four