In the saltworks!  That connected my cousin with the navy rather than with the army!

I would have liked not to believe Brett’s statement, but it was so circumstantial and precise as not to be doubted.  Brett was far from suspecting how deeply his information had cut me.  In spite of my loyalty, the discovery that my kinsman had not been a full-blown rebel was vastly humiliating.  How that once curiously regarded flower of chivalry had withered!  What about those reckless moonlight raids?  What had become of Prince Rupert, at the head of his plumed cavaliers, sweeping through the valley of the Shenandoah, and dealing merited destruction to the boys in blue?  In view of Brett’s startling revelation, my kinsman’s personal anecdotes of Stonewall Jackson took on an amusing quality which they had not possessed for us in the original telling.

I was disappointed that Clara’s astonishment was much more moderate than mine.

“He was too brave, Tom, dear.  He always seemed to be overdoing it just a grain, don’t you think?”

I didn’t think so at the time; I was afraid he was telling the truth.  And now, by one of those contradictions inseparable from weak humanity, I regretted that he was not.  A hero had tumbled from the family pedestal—­a misguided hero, to be sure, but still a hero.  My vanity, which in this case was of a complex kind, had received a shock.

I did not recover from it for nearly three months, when I received a second shock of a more serious nature.  It came in the shape of a letter, dated at Pensacola, Florida, and written by one Sylvester K. Matthews, advising me that George Flagg had died of the yellow fever in that city the previous month.  I gathered from the letter that the writer had been with my cousin through his illness, and was probably an intimate friend; at all events the details of the funeral had fallen to the charge of Mr. Matthews, who enclosed the receipted bills with the remark that he had paid them, but supposed that I would prefer to do so, leaving it, in a way, at my option.

The news of my cousin’s death grieved me more than I should have imagined beforehand.  He had not appreciated my kindness; he had not added to my happiness while I was endeavoring to secure his; he had been flagrantly ungrateful, and in one or two minor matters had deceived me.  Yet, after all said and done, he was my cousin, my only cousin—­and he was dead.  Let us criticise the living, but spare the dead.

I put the memoranda back into the envelope; they consisted of a bill for medical attendance, a board bill, the nurse’s account, and an undertaker’s bill, with its pathetic and, to me, happily, unfamiliar items.  For the rest of the day I was unable to fix my attention on my work, or to compose myself sufficiently to write to Mr. Matthews.  I quitted the office that evening an hour earlier than was my habit.