“You think that you can find your uncle’s house, my dear?” she asked, glancing at Virginia with concern.  Through all of that long journey she had worn a look apart.  “Do you think you can find your uncle’s house?”

Virginia started.  And then she smiled as she looked at the honest, alert, and squarely built gentleman beside her.

“Captain Brent can, Mrs. Ware,” she said.  “He can find anything.”

Whereupon the kind lady gave the Captain her hand.  “You look as if you could, Captain,” said she.  “Remember, if General Carvel is out of town, you promised to bring her to me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Captain Lige, “and so I shall.”

“Kerridge, kerridge!  Right dis-a-way!  No sah, dat ain’t de kerridge you wants.  Dat’s it, lady, you’se lookin at it.  Kerridge, kerridge, kerridge!”

Virginia tried bravely to smile, but she was very near to tears as she stood on the uneven pavement and looked at the scrawny horses standing patiently in the steady downpour.  All sorts of people were coming and going, army officers and navy officers and citizens of states and territories, driving up and driving away.

And this was Washington!

She was thinking then of the multitude who came here with aching hearts, —­with heavier hearts than was hers that day.  How many of the throng hurrying by would not flee, if they could, back to the peaceful homes they had left?  But perhaps those homes were gone now.  Destroyed, like her own, by the war.  Women with children at their breasts, and mothers bowed with sorrow, had sought this city in their agony.  Young men and old had come hither, striving to keep back the thoughts of dear ones left behind, whom they might never see again.  And by the thousands and tens of thousands they had passed from here to the places of blood beyond.

“Kerridge, sah!  Kerridge!”

“Do you know where General Daniel Carvel lives?”

“Yes, sah, reckon I does.  I Street, sah.  Jump right in, sah.”

Virginia sank back on the stuffy cushions of the rattle-trap, and then sat upright again and stared out of the window at the dismal scene.  They were splashing through a sea of mud.  Ever since they had left St. Louis, Captain Lige had done his best to cheer her, and he did not intend to desist now.

“This beats all,” he cried.  “So this is Washington, Why, it don’t compare to St. Louis, except we haven’t got the White House and the Capitol.  Jinny, it would take a scow to get across the street, and we don’t have ramshackly stores and nigger cabins bang up against fine Houses like that.  This is ragged.  That’s what it is, ragged.  We don’t have any dirty pickaninnies dodging among the horses in our residence streets.  I declare, Jinny, if those aren’t pigs!”

Virginia laughed.  She could not help it.

“Poor Lige!” she said.  “I hope Uncle Daniel has some breakfast for you.  You’ve had a good deal to put up with on this trip.”