Perennial summer reigned that autumn day in that reunited family.  It reigned the next day, and the next.  It would have reigned till now if the Belmontes and the other things would last as long as the advertisements declare; and, what is more, the Confederacy would have reigned till now, President Davis and General Lee! but for that great misery, which all families understand, which culminated in our great misfortune.

I was up in the cedar closet one day, looking for an old parade cap of mine, which I thought, though it was my third best, might look better than my second best, which I had worn ever since my best was lost at the Seven Pines.  I say I was standing on the lower shelf of the cedar closet, when, as I stepped along in the darkness, my right foot caught in a bit of wire, my left did not give way in time, and I fell, with a small wooden hat-box in my hand, full on the floor.  The corner of the hat-box struck me just below the second frontal sinus, and I fainted away.

When I came to myself I was in the blue chamber; I had vinegar on a brown paper on my forehead; the room was dark, and I found mother sitting by me, glad enough indeed to hear my voice, and to know that I knew her.  It was some time before I fully understood what had happened.  Then she brought me a cup of tea, and I, quite refreshed, said I must go to the office.

“Office, my child!” said she.  “Your leg is broken above the ankle; you will not move these six weeks.  Where do you suppose you are?”

Till then I had no notion that it was five minutes since I went into the closet.  When she told me the time, five in the afternoon, I groaned in the lowest depths.  For, in my breast pocket in that innocent coat, which I could now see lying on the window-seat, were the duplicate despatches to Mr. Mason, for which, late the night before, I had got the Secretary’s signature.  They were to go at ten that morning to Wilmington, by the Navy Department’s special messenger.  I had taken them to insure care and certainty.  I had worked on them till midnight, and they had not been signed till near one o’clock.  Heavens and earth, and here it was five o’clock!  The man must be half-way to Wilmington by this time.  I sent the doctor for Lafarge, my clerk.  Lafarge did his prettiest in rushing to the telegraph.  But no!  A freshet on the Chowan River, or a raid by Foster, or something, or nothing, had smashed the telegraph wire for that night.  And before that despatch ever reached Wilmington the navy agent was in the offing in the Sea Maid.

“But perhaps the duplicate got through?” No, breathless reader, the duplicate did not get through.  The duplicate was taken by Faucon, in the Ino.  I saw it last week in Dr. Lieber’s hands, in Washington.  Well, all I know is, that if the duplicate had got through, the Confederate government would have had in March a chance at eighty-three thousand two hundred and eleven muskets, which, as it was, never left Belgium.  So much for my treading into that blessed piece of wire on the shelf of the cedar closet, up stairs.