Both Harry and Dalton were delighted, and, although thanks were really due to General Lee, they thanked the President, who smiled dryly.  Then they saluted and withdrew, the President and the Secretary of State going at once into earnest consultation over the papers Mr. Benjamin had brought.

Harry felt that he had left an atmosphere of depression and said so, when they were outside in the bright sunshine.

“If you were trying to carry as much as Mr. Davis is carrying you’d be depressed too,” said Dalton.

“Maybe so, but let’s forget it.  We’ve got nothing to do for a few days but enjoy ourselves.  General Winder is to give us quarters, but we’re not to be under his command.  What say you to a little trip through the capitol?”

“Good enough.”

Congress had adjourned for the day, but they went through the building, admiring particularly the Houdon Washington, and then strolled again through the streets, which were so interesting and novel to them.  Richmond was never gayer and brighter.  They were sure that the hated Yankees could never come.  For more than two years the Army of Northern Virginia had been an insuperable bar to their advance, and it would continue so.

Harry suddenly lifted his cap as some one passed swiftly, and Dalton glancing backward saw a small vanishing figure.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“The thin little old maid in black whom we saw on the train.  She may have nodded to me when I bowed, but it was such a little nod that I’m not certain.”

“I rather like your being polite to an insignificant old maid, Harry.  I’d expect you, as a matter of course, to be polite to a young and pretty girl, overpolite probably.”

“That’ll do, George Dalton.  I like you best when you’re preaching least.  Come, let’s go into the hotel and hear what they’re talking about.”

After the custom of the times a large crowd was gathered in the spacious lobby of Richmond’s chief hotel.  Among them were the local celebrities in other things than war, Daniel, Bagby, Pegram, Randolph, and a half-dozen more, musicians, artists, poets, orators and wits.  People were quite democratic, and Harry and Dalton were free to draw their chairs near the edge of the group and listen.  Pegram, the humorist, gave them a glance of approval, when he noticed their uniforms, the deep tan of their faces, their honest eyes and their compact, strong figures.

Harry soon learned that a large number of English and French newspapers had been brought by a blockade runner to Wilmington, North Carolina, and had just reached the capital, the news of which these men were discussing with eagerness.

“We learn that the sympathies of both the French and English governments are still with us,” said Randolph.

“But these papers were all printed before the news of Vicksburg and Gettysburg had crossed the Atlantic,” said Daniel.