Chapter III: Part I: I (2)

"I looked for Joe, quick, among the men that were on the wharf; but he was not there." (I prefer to let Ellen tell her own story as far as possible.) "I saw the Captain send a hand ashore, and when he came back, ask him a question: then he came up to me: he looked anxious. 'Ellen,' he says, 'don't be troubled, but Joe is not here. The regiment went on to Columbus two days ago.' He said there'd be no trouble, that I could follow him on the railroad."

The Captain kept her on board until evening, when the train for Columbus started; then he went with her, secured her a seat, and arranged her comfortably. He had daughters at home, he told Ellen, bidding her keep quiet until she reached Columbus, then tell the name of her brother's regiment, and she would be with him in twenty minutes. "I am sure," he added, "Joe will get a furlough to attend to you."

The old boatman paid for her passage himself, his last charge being to "take care of her money," which made Ellen, when he was gone, remove it from her basket and carry it in a roll in her hand. There was a dull oil-lamp flickering in one end of the car, men's faces peering at her from every dusky corner, the friendly Captain's nodding a grave good-bye from the door,--and then, with a shrill cry, the train shot off into the night. It must be a lonesome, foreboding moment to any timid woman starting alone at night on a long journey, with the possible death waiting for her in every throb of the engine or coupling of the cars: so it was no wonder that the poor "natural," rushing thus into a world that opened suddenly wider and darker before her, "Joe," her one clear point, going back, back, out of sight, and withal a childish, unspeakable terror at the shrieking, fire-belching engine, should have cowered down on her seat, afraid to move or speak. So the night passed. "I was afraid to cry," said Ellen.

An hour or two after midnight the train reached Columbus; the depot dingy and dark; one or two far-off lamps bringing the only light out of the foggy night.

"The cars stopped with a great cry, and the people all rushed out. It seemed to me a minute and they were all gone. Nobody was left but me; when I got up and went to the car-door, they looked just like shadows going into the darkness, and beyond that there was a world of black houses. You've seen Columbus, Sir?"

"No."

"Then it would frighten you,"--in her slow, grave way. "I suppose there are not so many people in all the world beside." (It was Ellen's only experience of a city.) "So I was there alone at the depot, waiting for Joe. I was so sure he would come. There was a crowd of men, with whips, calling out, and plucking at my shawl. I was very afraid, so I crept off into a dark corner and sat down on a box with my carpet-bag and basket. The men drove off with their carriages, but there were half a dozen others under a shed quarrelling. I sat there an hour, thinking surely Joe would be along. Then the clock struck two: I got up and went to the men under the shed. I said to them, 'Do you know Joseph Carrol?'

"The men raised up from where they were lying, and stared at me. I'm afraid, Sir, they had been drinking. So I said it again. They laughed and began to make jokes about me, I cried a little,--I couldn't help it, Sir. I knew the Lord Jesus was near me, but I couldn't help it. One of the men, whose clothes were the raggedest and whose face was very red, said,--

"'Boys, I guess you're mistaken. Who are you, my girl?'

"I told them I was Joseph Carrol's sister, and how it was I had come to find him.

"'You'll have to help me, Sir,' I said to the red-faced man; 'for I have a trouble in my head often, and it seems as if it was a-coming soon.'

"Some of the men laughed again, but the man I had spoken to got up and buttoned his coat. He had to lean against the fence, he was so unsteady.

"'You stop that jeering, Jim Flynn,' he says, swearing. 'Can't you see what the girl is? Where's your money, Ellen?'

"Then it was I found my money was gone. I remembered putting it on the seat beside me before we changed cars at Urbanna. So I told him. He looked at me steady.

"'I believe you,' he says. 'Come along. The Twenty-Fourth Ohio is out in Camp Chase,--four miles out. You come to an hotel to-night and go out to Joe in the morning.'

"So he took me up to a big house, and said to a man there that I was a decent girl, and gave him money to pay for my bed and breakfast, and bid me good-night."

Early in the morning Ellen dressed herself neatly, "to please Joe," and started out to the camp, carrying her basket, asking her way as she went. The girl had wrought herself up now to such a certainty of seeing him that a disappointment was sure to be a new and different shock from any that had gone before. I suppose, too, the novel sight of the tents, the crowds of armed men, excited her feeble mind beyond its powers. She came to the gate and asked the sentry to tell Joseph Carrol of the Twenty-Fourth Ohio that his sister had come.

"It would need a long call to do that, my girl," said the man. "The Twenty-Fourth went off to active service yesterday."

"To where?"

"Virginia."

About a mile from the camp live two childless old people who then were keepers of the toll-gate on the road into town. I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten their name, it being a common one; but I remember what their lives were, and I am sure that they who carry the record of every man's hours to add to the Great Reckoning must find in their hackneyed name a meaning even to them of great truth and a rare charity. The old lady told me afterwards of her finding Ellen sitting on the roadside near her well, her mind quite gone, yet very gentle and grave even in her madness. They took her home to the toll-gate house, and kept her for two or three days, in which they learned her story.

"My husband," she said, "telegraphed to the Colonel of the regiment and found it was delayed at Bellaire; but as Ellen's health was in so critical a state, they thought it best to say nothing about her to her brother, and I was resolved that she should not go on. We offered (what we had never done before to any one) to adopt her, and treat her as our own child. People coming in and seeing the awkward country-body would wonder why we set such a sudden store by her, but in a little while they'd see as we did. I think her pure soul showed right through her homely face. Then she trusted people as free as a child; so everybody was kind to her. But I used to think there was but two people real to her in the world,--the 'Lord Jesus,' and 'Joe.'"

When Ellen was herself again, however, she insisted upon going on, and fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of letters from the Governor of Ohio and her new friends, in the hope of obtaining a furlough for Carrol. With a prudent after-thought, too, the gate-keeper's wife wrote Ellen's name and her own address upon a card which she fastened to the faithful little basket, in case of any accident; and then, with many anxious looks and blessings, Ellen again started on her journey.

At Zanesville, her companion, finding some unexpected business which would detain him in that place, left her to pursue her journey alone. It is but a few hours' ride from Columbus to Bellaire (the terminus of the Central Ohio Railroad); but at Lewis's Mills this day a collision or some other accident occurred, by which the train was delayed until late that night: no other harm was done, except to give time for poor Ellen's chance again to fail her. Joe's regiment crossed the Ohio that night and went into Virginia.

Bellaire and Benwood, the opposite point on the other side of the river, are small railroad stations, which one or two iron-mills have rendered foul with ashes and smoke. The crossing of the river at that time was by a ferry, rendered purposely tedious by the managers of the Baltimore and Ohio Road, to force their passengers to the lower junction at Parkersburg. I mention this to account for the detention which ensued. When the train stopped at Bellaire, Ellen followed the crowd off the platform into a tavern consisting of a barn-like eating-room and a few starved little garret rooms over it. She stopped at the door uncertainly, while the passengers crowded about the eating-stands at the far end of the room. A fat, oily landlord came up with a hat driven down over his brows.

"Cross the river to-night, Ma'am? Slow work! slow work! Not get this train over till morning. Better take a bite."

Ellen managed to interpose her brother's name and that of the regiment.

"Twenty-Fourth Ohio? Gone over to-day and this evening. Government has the roads and ferries now, and that keeps passengers back. Troops must be transported, you know,"--and then stopped suddenly, seeing Ellen's face.

"Where did you say he had gone?"

"Over," with a jerk of his thumb across the river,--"into Virginia. You are ill, young woman! I'll call Susan."

Virginia, the country of the man-hunters! A low moon lighted up the broad river and the hills beyond; they were mountains to Ellen, threatening and fierce. She looked at them steadily.

"All the stories I had heard of that country came up quick to me," she said, afterwards. "I thought it was death for me or Joe to venture there. Then he was gone! But I had a great courage, somehow, there at Bellaire. It came to me sudden. I said to the man it did not matter. I would have gone with Joe, and I could follow him. He spoke to me a minute or two, and then he went for 'Susan,' who was his wife. She was a sharp-faced woman, and she scolded her servants all the time; but she was very kind to me. When I told her about Joe, she brought me some tea, and made me lie down until it would be time to cross the ferry, which was not until near morning. She would take no money from me. She said, Sue Myers was no skin-flint to take money from the likes of me. Afterwards she said, if I found Joe and he did well, he could pay her some time again: these soldiers made money easy, lounging round camp. I was angry at that," Ellen said, reddening; "but she would not take the money from me. She told me not to be disappointed, if the regiment had left Benwood and gone out the Baltimore Road. She knew they were to camp at Piedmont, and to follow them up, for they had but a day's start of me. It was quite clear day before our turn came to cross the ferry, and then we had to wait for hours on the other side. When I came out of the ferry-house, I put my foot on the grass, and I thought, 'This is Virginia!' It was as if I had stepped on some place where a murder had been done. I was as silly as a half-witted person," blushing apologetically. "I have had great kindness done to me in Virginia since then."

Though Ellen said no more of this, as she was talking to Virginians, we readily understood the real terror which had seized her, added to the gnawing anxiety to see her brother. Caspar Hauser was not more ignorant of the actual world than this girl, brought up as she had been in such utter seclusion. The last few days had shattered whatever fancies she had formed about life, and given her nothing tangible in their stead. Even Coldwater and Joe, and "them that lay up on the hill," were beginning to be like dreams, cold and far-off. It was just a wild whirling through space, night-storms, strange faces crowding about her from place to place; undefined sights, sounds that terrified her, and a long-drawn sickening hope to find Joe through all. No more warm rooms and comfortable evenings beside the fire with mother, no more suppers made ready for the boys, and jokes and laughing when they came home; there was no more a house to call home, no mother nor boys, only something cold and clammy under the muddy ground yonder.

"Ours had been a damp house on the lake-shore," Ellen said, "and we kept a fire always. Winter or summer, I always had seen a warm fire in the grate; but the morning I left Coldwater they put it out; and in all my travel, when I'd think of home, I'd go back to the thought of that grate, with a few wet ashes scattered over the hearth, and nobody to sweep them up, and the cold sun shining down the chimney on them. When I'd think of that, I'd say, 'It's all over!' It began to seem to me as if there was no more Ellen and no more Joe."

She had come, too, into the border region, where the war was breaking ground, with all its dull, gross reality of horrors, to which the farther South and North were strangers; the broken talk in the cars was even more terrifying to her, because half understood,--of quiet farmers murdered in cold blood, of pillaging and outrage, of anticipated insurrections among the slaves, and vengeance for their wrongs.

"I thought of the Lord Jesus and Joe, but they did not seem to be alive here," she said. "I would peep into my basket and look at the Testament and the spoons and Joe's collars, and that made things seem real to me." (Ellen's basket, by the way, was but another example of the singular habit which we find in persons of unsound intellect, the clinging to some one inanimate object as if it formed a tangible link to hold time and place together.)

When the train stopped at Littleton, the conductor, an old, gray-headed man, came up to Ellen as she sat alone.

"Simeon Myers told me your story," he said, gravely. "He crossed the river to tell me. I'll take the matter in hand myself; I telegraphed before leaving Benwood, in advance. The Twenty-Fourth Ohio, they say there, have gone on to camp at Piedmont; but the movements of the troops are so uncertain, we will wait until the answer comes to my despatch at the next station. You go to sleep, Ellen."

"Yes, Sir," numbly.

She sat with her hand over her eyes, until the name of the next station was called, then rose, and remained standing. The old conductor came in.

"Sit down," he said, gently. "Why, you shiver, and are as cold as if your blood was frozen!"

"My brother, Sir?"

"Tut! tut! Yes! Good news this time, Ellen. The Twenty-Fourth is at Fetterman,--has stopped there, I don't know why,--and"--pulling out his watch, but speaking slowly, and controlling her with his eye--"in two hours we will be there."

At this time (June, 1861) Government, striking at the Rebellion wildly, as a blind man learning to fence, was throwing bodies of raw, undisciplined troops into the Border States, wherever there was foothold, to their certain destruction, though with an ulterior good effect, as it proved. Camps of these men were stationed along the road as Ellen passed,--broad-backed and brawny-limbed Iowans and Indianians, clothed in every variety of militia military gear, riding saddleless horses, with a rope often for a bridle, sleeping on the ground with neither tents nor blankets. Near one of these straggling encampments the long train stopped, with a trumpet-like shriek from the engine. "Here's Fetterman, and here's Joe, Ellen," said the conductor, his old face in almost as bright a glow as hers, as he hustled her off on the platform.

"It was just a few low houses, not so large as Coldwater, and soldiers everywhere, on the hills and in the fields and strolling along the road; and it was a clear, blue summer's day, and--oh, it did seem as the soldiers and the town and the sky were glad because I had got there at last, and were saying, 'Joe! Joe!'"

She went into the nearest house, a wide, wooden building, where two women sat shelling peas. Ellen propounded her usual question. The oldest woman took off her spectacles, and looked at her keenly.

"The Twenty-Fourth Ohio? How far did you say you had come? Michigan? Forgive me, (Jinny, bring a chair,) if I looked at you curiously; but I really fancied the people out yonder were savages."

Ellen laughed nervously.

"And you are Virginian? Yes! But my brother"--

The old lady's scrutiny grew graver.

"We are Virginians, in every sense of the word. So I know but little of the movements of the troops. But Captain Williams, the commandant of the post, occupies two of our rooms, and his wife is a gentle little body. Jinny, call Mrs. Williams."

So Jinny, a shy, kindly-faced little girl, disappeared, and speedily returned with the officer's wife (who had a dainty baby in her arms) and a glass of currant wine, which she pressed on Ellen. Mrs. Williams heard Ellen's story in silence, looking significantly at her hostess when it was finished.

"Yes, yes; of course you'll see Joe. Hold the baby, please, Jinny. Now let me take off your bonnet. But you won't mind, if there's a little delay,--a very little. I am not sure, but I am afraid. We'll send for Captain Williams; and know at once. But some detached companies went on to Grafton for special orders this morning, and I thought part of the Twenty-Fourth was with them. There! there! lie down a bit on my bed, or stay here with Mrs. Ford. Very well; it will all be right; only keep up heart."

So chattering, the little woman and the old one fussed about Ellen, soothing, patting her, administering tea, comfort, and hope, all in a breath, as women do to the healing of soul and body,--while Jinny, baby in arms, made off and brought in a moustached young man, with a pleasant, cheerful face, not unlike his wife's.

"It is an unfortunate piece of work," he said. "Yes, the detachment included that company to which Carrol belonged. They are at Grafton now; and I cannot send a message, for official despatches will be going over the lines until night. In the morning, though, it shall be the first word to go. I know the colonel of that regiment, and I do not doubt we will have Joe here on furlough to-morrow."

"They were very careful of me," said Ellen. "Mrs. Ford made me sleep in her spare room; and Mrs. Williams brought me in my supper herself, and sat by me with baby all the evening. I couldn't believe they were all Virginians, and fighting against each other too. The next morning was clear and sunny. Jinny came in, and opened the window, and said, 'Isn't such a clear day a good omen?' But I hadn't courage to laugh with her, I was so tired; I had to lie still on a settee there was there. Captain Williams came in, and said,--

"'By nine o'clock we will have an answer to my message, Ellen.'

"I said then, 'When it comes, if it is "No," will you just say, "No, Ellen," and no more,--not one word more, please?'

"He said, 'I understand,' and went out.

"I heard him tell them not to disturb me; so I lay quite still, with my hands over my eyes. He kept pacing up and down as if he was anxious; then I heard a man's step coming towards him. I knew he brought the message. Captain Williams came towards the door; his wife was there waiting. I heard him speak to her, and then he said, 'You do it, Mary.' So she came in, and kissed me, and she said, 'He is gone, Ellen,'--no more but that. I knew then I never should see my brother again. Mrs. Williams cried, but I did not. She told me, after a while, that he had gone by another road to the Kanawha Salines, where they were fighting that day. 'You _cannot_ go,' she said. 'It is a wilderness of hills and swamps. You must stay with us; help me with baby, and presently Joe will be back.'

"I did not say anything. I lay there, and covered my face. She thought I was asleep presently, so rose softly and went away. I lay quiet all day. I could not speak nor move. They brought me some wine, and talked to me, but I did not understand. I knew I must go on, go on!"--with the wild look again in her eyes. "They would not disturb me, but let me lie still all night there. Early in the morning, before day, I got up softly, softly, I was so afraid they would hear me, and made a light. I wanted to bid Joe farewell before I started."

"Where were you going, Ellen?"

"On, you know,"--with that grave, secretive look of the insane. "I _had_ to go. So I made a light. I wanted to write a letter to my brother, but my head was so tired I could not; then I took my little Testament, and I marked the fourteenth chapter of St. John. He knew that I liked that best, and I thought that would be my letter. I wrote alongside of the printing, 'Good bye, Joe.' Then I fastened it up, and directed it to Joseph Carrol, Kanawha Salines."

"That was a wide direction, Ellen."

"Was it, Sir?" indifferently. "So Joe has it now. I think all his life he'll look at that, and say, 'That was Sis's last word.' I went gently out of the door, and I put my book in the post-office, and then I went away."

She began, it appears, to retrace her way on the railroad-track on foot, leaving her money and clothes at Mrs. Ford's, but carrying the little basket carefully. The Williamses, thinking she had followed Joe, searched for her in the direction of Grafton, and so failed to find her. There are no villages between Fetterman and Fairmount,--only scattered farm-houses, and but few of those,--the line of the railroad running between solitary stretches of moorland, and in gloomy defiles of the mountains. Ellen followed the road, a white, glaring, dusty line, all day. Nothing broke the dreary silence but the whirr of some unseen bird through the forests, or the hollow thud, thud of a woodpecker on a far-off tree. Once or twice, too, a locomotive with a train of cars rushed past her with a fierce yell. She slept that night by the roadside with a fallen tree for a pillow, and the next morning began again her plodding journey.

I come now to the saddest part of the poor girl's story, gathered from her own indistinct remembrances. I mean to pass briefly over it. On the latter part of this day's travel, Ellen had passed several of the encampments which lined the road, but had escaped notice by making a detour through the woods. A mile or two east of Fairmount, however, coming near one, she went up to the first low shed; for the men had thrown up temporary huts, part wood, part mud.

"It was a woman who was there," she said, in apology; "and I was not very strong. I had eaten nothing but berries since the morning before."

The woman was a sutler. She listened to Ellen's explanations, incoherent enough probably, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, called to some of the soldiers lounging near by.

"Here's a likely tale," she said. "I half suspect this is the Rebel spy that's been hanging round these two weeks, and kept Allan dodging you. See to her, boys, while I weigh out this sugar."

The regiment was made up of the offals of a large city; the men, both brutal and idle, eager for excitement; this sutler, the only woman in camp. The evening was coming on. Ellen was alone in the half-drunken, shouting crowd.

--Not alone. He was near who was real and actual to her always. When I think of Christ as the All-Wise and All-Merciful in this our present day, I like to remember Him as going step by step with this half-crazed child in her long and solitary journey. When I hear how her danger was warded back, how every rough face turned at last towards her with a strange kindness, and tenderness, I see again the Hand that wrote upon the dust of the Temple, and clearer than in the storm or battle which I know He guides I see again the face of Him who took little children in His arms and blessed them.

When the sutler went down to the end of the field she found Big Jake, the bully of the regiment, holding the girl by the shoulder, her clothes covered with mud with which the men had pelted her. She had given one or two low cries of terror, and stood shivering weakly, her eye alone steady, holding the man at bay, as she might a brute. She held out her hands when she saw the woman. "I am no spy," she cried, shrilly.

"We'll soon test that," growled the camp-follower.

"Here, you Jake, unhand the girl! Yonder's Captain C---- looking this way. If she turns out as I say, it'll be a lucky stroke of work for you an' me."

Jake flung her back with a curse, and the woman led her to her shed. She searched Ellen. I saw the girl, when she told it, turn ashy white with terrible shame and anger. She was one of the womanliest women I ever knew.

"I would have killed her then," she said gravely.

"When she could not find that I was a spy, she fastened me in an open pen outside her shed. I tore off the clothes she had touched, they seemed so vile to me. I was so shamed that I held my hands to my throat so that I could die, but she came and fastened them with a cord. She kept me there all the evening, and the men looked over the pen and laughed at 'Mother Murray's prisoner.' After awhile I did not heed them. The moon came up, and I cried then thinking if mother or Joe could know what had come to me. _Then I made up my mind what to do._ I prayed to the Lord Jesus; but I thought, through all, what I would do. She brought me some food, but I would not touch it, though I was sick with hunger. When the drum had beat and the camp was all quiet, there was a sentry came walking up and down before the pen. He had a kind, good face: he whistled to keep himself awake. Afterwards he stopped it, and, leaning over the log-fence, said, 'Forgive me. I didn't think of your being a prisoner, or I would not have whistled.' It was so sudden, his kind way of speaking, that I began to cry, sitting back in the corner. He bade me never heed, for that I would be free in the morning. 'You're no spy,' he said,--'only Captain Roberts heard Mother Murray's story, and put me here till he could see for himself in the morning.' Then he asked me questions, and somehow it did me good to tell all about Joe, and how I had not found him. He stood there when I had done, thinking, and whistling again, soft to himself. 'Just you wait, Ellen,' he says,--'I know what you want.' And with that he takes out a little Testament, and, sitting down, he reads to me. Then he asked me what verses I liked, and talked of the chapters, till I began to forget all that had happened. Then he put the book in his pocket, and talked of other things, and made me laugh once or twice; and at last he took a card out of his pocket, and thought for a good while. Then he wrote a name on it, Mrs. Jane Burroughs, Xenia, Ohio, and gave it to me. 'That is my mother,' he said, very gravely,--'as good a woman as God lets live. Do you go to her, Ellen, when you're out of this den, and tell her I sent you, and, if I should die in this bloody business, to remember I said to be good to you.' Soon after that another man came and took his place, and I saw him no more. He was very kind. But I knew what _I_ would do,"--with the same dropping of the voice.

In the morning Ellen was released, and the soldiers forbidden to molest her. She hurried along the road to Fairmont. There is a long bridge there, spanning the Monongahela. "I saw it when I was in the cars, and the sight of the water below it came back to me through all my trouble. It was noon when I came to it again. I don't think I stopped at all, to think about Joe, or to think good-bye to him. But," her eye wandering vaguely, "I said good-bye to my little basket I had packed it at home for my journey, you know. I thought Joe would laugh when he saw some things I had there. But it was all over now. So I went down to the water's edge, and set it down; and then I went up, and climbed up on the parapet of the bridge, and then I heard a cry, and I was jerked down to the ground. When I came to myself, I was in a bed. They had ice on my head. They told me they had found my basket, and so knew my name. I laid there for several days. It was soldiers that found me. They paid for me at the tavern. But the regiment was going on. One day, when I was able to sit up, two of them said to me, they would take me to see Joe. They took me on the cars; all the way I had to lie down, with ice to my head. We came a long way; every time we stopped, they said we were going to Joe. I didn't know, my brain was like fire in my head."

Ellen was sent on by the officers of this regiment, and lodged by them for safe-keeping in the jail at Wheeling. The long-suspended brain-fever had set in. She was taken through the streets, her clothes ragged and muddy, her head bare, followed by a curious crowd of idlers, with just enough reason left to know what the house was in which they lodged her. Cruel as they were in act, it proved a kindness to the girl. The jailer and his family nursed her carefully, and gave her a large, airy room in the old debtors' prison.

After she had been there three weeks, a person who had accidentally seen Ellen that first day on the street went to the jail and asked to see her. A whim, perhaps, the fruit of idleness or curiosity. But Ellen thought otherwise. She was clothed and in her right mind now, and sat inside of the iron door, looking with her large, grave, blue eyes searchingly at her visitor. "God sent you," she said, quietly.

That night she told the jailer's wife that her new friend had promised to come the next morning and take her out.

"She may disappoint you, Ellen."

"No. I know God meant her to come, and I shall see my brother again."

She was strangely cheerful; it seemed as if, in that long torpor, some vision of the future had in truth been given to her.

"I shall see Joe," she would repeat steadily, a great glow on her face, "I know."

She carried her little basket, going to her friend's house. It was here I saw Ellen. She was not pretty,--with an awkward, ungainly build, and homely face; but there hung about her a great innocence and purity; and she had a certain trustful manner that went home to the roughest and gained their best feeling from them. Her voice, I remember, was low and remarkably sweet. It was curious to see how all, from the servants in the house to _blase_ young men of society, were touched by some potent charm, and tried in simple, natural ways to aid her. I used to think Ellen was sent into the world to show how near one of the very least of these, His brethren, came to Him. She grew restless,--her disease working with her. "She must go on to Columbus,--to the gate-keeper and his wife. She would live with them as their child."

Meanwhile every effort had been made to communicate with her brother, or to gain a furlough for him. But all failed; the regiment was in the wilds of the Virginia border in active service. No message could reach him. There was no system then in the army.

What could be done for Ellen's comfort in the future her friends did anxiously, and then sent her on to Columbus. She remained with the old people but a week, however. "She was very happy with us," the gate-keeper's wife said. Governor Dennison promised to procure Joe a furlough, and, if possible, a dismissal, as soon as the regiment could be reached by letter. In the mean while she busied herself in making a dress and little useful things for housekeeping, to please her brother when he should come; used to talk all day of her plans,--how they would live near us in some quiet little house. Her trouble seemed all forgotten.

But one day she went out and saw the camp. The sight of the armed men and the uniforms seemed to bring back all she had suffered in Virginia. She was uneasy and silent that night,--said once or twice that she must go on, go on,--got her basket and packed it again. The next morning she went across the field without it, as if to take a walk. When an hour passed we searched for her, and found she had gone into town and taken passage on the Western Railroad.

My story ends here. We never could trace her, though no effort was left untried. I confess that this is one, though almost hopeless. Yet I thought that some chance reader might be able to finish the story for me.

Whether Joe fell in his country's service or yet lives in some "little house" for Ellen, or whether she has found a longer, surer rest, in a house made ready for her long ago by other hands than his, I may never know; but I am sure, that, living or dead, He who is loving and over all has the poor "natural" in His tenderest keeping, and that some day she will go home to Him and to Joe.

WINTER-LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG.

As September drew to an end, with only here and there a suggestion of autumn in chrome-colored leaves on the ends of birch-branches, we were told that any day might suddenly bring forth winter. I remember, that, five years before, in precisely the same season, I had travelled from Upsala to Stockholm in a violent snow-storm, and therefore accepted the announcement as a part of the regular programme of the year. But the days came and went; fashionable equipages forsook their summer ground of the Islands, and crowded the Nevskoi Prospekt; the nights were cold and raw; the sun's lessening declination was visible from day to day, and still Winter delayed to make his appearance.

The Island drive was our favorite resort of an afternoon; and we continued to haunt it long after every summer guest had disappeared, and when the _datchas_ and palaces showed plank and matting in place of balcony and window. In the very heart of St. Petersburg the one full stream of the Nevada splits into three main arms, which afterwards subdivide, each seeking the Gulf of Finland at its own swift, wild will. The nearest of these islands, Vassili Ostrow, is a part of the solid city: on Kammenoi and Aptekarskoi you reach the commencement of gardens and groves; and beyond these the rapid waters mirror only palace, park, and summer theatre. The widening streams continually disclose the horizon-line of the Gulf; and at the farthest point of the drive, where the road turns sharply back again from the freedom of the shore into mixed woods of birch and pine, the shipping at Cronstadt--and sometimes the phantoms of fortresses--detach themselves from the watery haze, and the hill of Pargola, in Finland, rises to break the dreary level of the Ingrian marshes.

During the sunny evenings and the never-ending twilights of mid-summer, all St. Petersburg pours itself upon these islands. A league-long wall of dust rises from the carriages and droschkies in the main highway; and the branching Neva-arms are crowded with skiffs and diminutive steamers bound for pleasure-gardens where gypsies sing and Tyrolese _yodel_ and jugglers toss their knives and balls, and private rooms may be had for gambling and other cryptic diversions. Although with shortened days and cool evenings the tide suddenly took a reflux and the Nevskoi became a suggestion of Broadway, (which, of all individual streets, it most nearly resembles,) we found an indescribable charm in the solitude of the fading groves and the waves whose lamenting murmur foretold their speedy imprisonment. We had the whole superb drive to ourselves. It is true that Ivan, upon the box, lifted his brows in amazement, and sighed that his jaunty cap of green velvet should be wasted upon the desert air, whenever I said, "_Na Ostrowa_," but he was too genuine a Russian to utter a word of remonstrance.

Thus, day by day, unfashionable, but highly satisfied, we repeated the lonely drive, until the last day came, as it always will. I don't think I shall ever forget it. It was the first day of November. For a fortnight the temperature had been a little below the freezing-point, and the leaves of the alder-thickets, frozen suddenly and preserved as in a great out-door refrigerator, maintained their green. A pale-blue mist rose from the Gulf and hung over the islands, the low sun showing an orange disk, which touched the shores with the loveliest color, but gave no warmth to the windless air. The parks and gardens were wholly deserted, and came and went, on either side, phantom-like in their soft, gray, faded tints. Under every bridge flashed and foamed the clear beryl-green waters. And nobody in St. Petersburg, except ourselves, saw this last and sunniest flicker of the dying season!

The very next day was cold and dark, and so the weather remained, with brief interruptions, for months. On the evening of the 6th, as we drove over the Nikolai Bridge to dine with a friend on Vassili Ostrow, we noticed fragments of ice floating down the Neva. Looking up the stream, we were struck by the fact that the remaining bridges had been detached from the St. Petersburg side, floated over, and anchored along the opposite shore. This seemed a needless precaution, for the pieces of drift-ice were hardly large enough to have crushed a skiff. How surprised were we, then, on returning home, four hours later, to find the noble river gone, not a green wave to be seen, and, as far as the eye could reach, a solid floor of ice, over which people were already crossing to and fro!

Winter, having thus suddenly taken possession of the world, lost no time in setting up the signs of his rule. The leaves, whether green or brown, disappeared at one swoop; snow-gusts obscured the little remaining sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings; oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the physiognomy of the capital was completely changed. All its life and stir withdrew from the extremities and gathered into a few central thoroughfares, as if huddling together for mutual warmth and encouragement in the cold air and under the gloomy sky.

For darkness, rather than cold, is the characteristic of the St. Petersburg winter. The temperature, which at Montreal or St. Paul would not be thought remarkably low, seems to be more severely felt here, owing to the absence of pure daylight. Although both Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, the air always retains a damp, raw, penetrating quality, and the snow is more frequently sticky and clammy than dry and crystalline. Few, indeed, are the days which are not cheerless and depressing. In December, when the sky is overcast for weeks together, the sun, rising after nine o'clock, and sliding along just above the horizon, enables you to dispense with lamplight somewhere between ten and eleven; but by two in the afternoon you must call for lights again. Even when a clear day comes, the yellow, level sunshine is a combination of sunrise and sunset, and neither tempers the air nor mitigates the general expression of gloom, almost of despair, upon the face of Nature.

The preparations for the season, of course, have been made long before. In most houses the double windows are allowed to remain through the summer, but they must be carefully examined, the layer of cotton between them, at the bottom, replenished, a small vessel of salt added to absorb the moisture and prevent it from freezing on the panes, and strips of paper pasted over every possible crack. The outer doors are covered with wadded leather, overlapping the frames on all sides. The habitations being thus almost hermetically sealed, they are easily warmed by the huge porcelain stoves, which retain warmth so tenaciously that one fire per day is sufficient for the most sensitive constitutions. In my own room, I found that one armful of birch-wood reduced to coal, every alternate morning, created a steady temperature of 64 deg. Although the rooms are always spacious, and arranged in suites of from three to a dozen, according to the extent and splendor of the residence, the atmosphere soon becomes close and characterized by an unpleasant odor, suggesting its diminished vitality; for which reason pastilles are burned, or _eau de Cologne_ reduced to vapor in a heated censer, whenever visits are anticipated. It was a question with me, whether or not the advantage of a thoroughly equable temperature was counterbalanced by the lack of circulation. The physical depression we all felt seemed to result chiefly from the absence of daylight.

One winter picture remains clearly outlined upon my memory. In the beginning of December we happened once to drive across the Admiralty Square in the early evening twilight,--three o'clock in the afternoon. The temperature was about 10 deg. below zero, the sky a low roof of moveless clouds, which seemed to be frozen in their places. The pillars of St. Isaac's Cathedral--splendid monoliths of granite, sixty feet high--had precipitated the moisture of the air, and stood, silvered with rime from base to capital. The Column of Alexander, the bronze statue of Peter, with his horse poised in air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated, every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled, sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly to and fro, or a droschky, drawn by a frosted horse, sped away to the entrance of the Nevskoi Prospekt. Even these appeared rather like wintry phantoms than creatures filled with warm blood and breathing the breath of life. The vast spaces of the capital, the magnitude of its principal edifices, and the display of gold and colors strengthened the general aspect of unreality, by introducing so many inharmonious elements into the picture. A bleak moor, with the light of a single cottage-window shining across it, would have been less cold, dead, and desolate.

The temperature, I may here mention, was never very severe. There were three days when the mercury fluctuated between 15 deg. and 20 deg. below zero, five days when it reached 10 deg. below, and perhaps twenty when it fell to zero, or a degree or two on either side. The mean of the five winter months was certainly not lower than +12 deg. Quite as much rain fell as snow. After two or three days of sharp cold, there was almost invariably a day of rain or fog, and for many weeks walking was so difficult that we were obliged to give up all out-door exercise except skating or sliding. The streets were either coated with glassy ice or they were a foot deep in slush. There was more and better sleighing in the vicinity of Boston last winter than in St. Petersburg during the winter of 1862-3. In our trips to the Observatory of Pulkova, twelve miles distant, we were frequently obliged to leave the highway and put our sled-runners upon the frosted grass of the meadows. The rapid and continual changes of temperature were more trying than any amount of steady cold. _Grippe_ became prevalent, and therefore fashionable, and all the endemic diseases of St. Petersburg showed themselves in force. The city, it is well known, is built upon piles, and most of the inhabitants suffer from them. Children look pale and wilted, in the absence of the sun, and special care must be taken of those under five years of age. Some little relatives of mine, living in the country, had their daily tumble in the snow, and thus kept ruddy; but in the city this is not possible, and we had many anxious days before the long darkness was over.

As soon as snow had fallen and freezing weather set in, the rough, broken ice of the Neva was flooded in various places for skating-ponds, and the work of erecting ice-hills commenced. There were speedily a number of the latter in full play, in the various suburbs,--a space of level ground, at least a furlong in length, being necessary. They are supported by subscription, and I had paid ten rubles for permission to use a very fine one on the farther island, when an obliging card of admission came for the gardens of the Taurida Palace, where the younger members of the Imperial family skate and slide. My initiation, however, took place at the first-named locality, whither we were conducted by an old American resident of St. Petersburg.

The construction of these ice-hills is very simple. They are rude towers of timber, twenty to thirty feet in height, the summit of which is reached by a staircase at the back, while in front descends a steep concave of planking upon which water is poured until it is covered with a six-inch coating of solid ice. Raised planks at the side keep the sled in its place until it reaches the foot, where it enters upon an icy plain two to four hundred yards in length, (in proportion to the height of the hill,) at the extremity of which rises a similar hill, facing towards the first, but a little on one side, so that the sleds from the opposite ends may pass without collision.

The first experience of this diversion is fearful to a person of delicate nerves. The pitch of the descent is so sheer, the height so great, (apparently,) the motion of the sled so swift, and its course so easily changed,--even the lifting of a hand is sufficient,--that the novice is almost sure to make immediate shipwreck. The sleds are small and low, with smooth iron runners, and a plush cushion, upon which the navigator sits bolt upright with his legs close together, projecting over the front. The runners must be exactly parallel to the lines of the course at starting, and the least tendency to sway to either side must be instantly corrected by the slightest motion of the hand.

I engaged one of the _mujiks_ in attendance to pilot me on my first voyage. The man having taken his position well forward on the little sled, I knelt upon the rear end, where there was barely space enough for my knees, placed my hands upon his shoulders, and awaited the result. He shoved the sled with his hands, very gently and carefully, to the brink of the icy steep: then there was a moment's adjustment: then a poise: then--sinking of the heart, cessation of breath, giddy roaring and whistling of the air, and I found myself scudding along the level with the speed of an express train. I never happened to fall out of a fourth-story window, but I immediately understood the sensations of the unfortunate persons who do. It was so frightful that I shuddered when we reached the end of the course and the man coolly began ascending the steps of the opposite hill, with the sled under his arm. But my companions were waiting to see me return, so I mounted after him, knelt again, and held my breath. This time, knowing what was coming, I caught a glimpse of our descent, and found that only the first plunge from the brink was threatening. The lower part of the curve, which is nearly a parabolic line, is more gradual, and the seeming headlong fall does not last more than the tenth part of a second. The sensation, nevertheless, is very powerful, having all the attraction, without the reality, of danger.

The ice-hills in the Taurida Gardens were not so high, and the descent was less abrupt: the course was the smooth floor of an intervening lake, which was kept clear for skating. Here I borrowed a sled, and was so elated at performing the feat successfully, on the first attempt, that I offered my services as charioteer to a lady rash enough to accept them. The increased weight gave so much additional impetus to the sled, and thus rendered its guidance a more delicate matter. Finding that it began to turn even before reaching the bottom, I put down my hand suddenly upon the ice. The effect was like an explosion; we struck the edge of a snow-bank, and were thrown entirely over it and deeply buried in the opposite side. The attendants picked us up without relaxing a muscle of their grave, respectful faces, and quietly swept the ice for another trial. But after that I preferred descending alone.

Good skaters will go up and down these ice-hills on their skates. The feat has a hazardous look, but I have seen it performed by boys of twelve. The young Grand-Dukes who visited the Gardens generally contented themselves with skating around the lake at not too violent a speed. Some ladies of the court circle also timidly ventured to try the amusement, but its introduction was too recent for them to show much proficiency. On the Neva, in fact, the English were the best skaters. During the winter, one of them crossed the Gulf to Cronstadt, a distance of twenty-two miles, in about two hours.