a faithful servant, who had often
carried her son in his arms; and she was to be rejoined and escorted
home, at the year's end, by Captain Richard Doubledick.

She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), and they
to her. She went to the neighborhood of Aix; and there, in their own
chateau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into intimacy with
a family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her
often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most
compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary
English lady's stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family
were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well
that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her
residence abroad under their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home,
piecemeal as it came about, from time to time; and at last enclosed a
polite note, from the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion
of his approaching mission to that neighborhood, the honor of the
company of that man so justly celebrated, Captain Richard Doubledick.

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigor of life,
broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been before,
dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Traveling
through all that extent of country after three years of peace, he
blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was
golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound in sheaves for food,
not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from
peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fair
fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often
seen the terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed; and they
brought him in a softened spirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep
blue evening.

It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round
towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows than
Aladdin's palace. The entrance doors stood open, as doors often do in
that country when the heat of the day is past; and the Captain saw no
bell or knocker, and walked in.

He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy after
the glare of a Southern day's travel. Extending along the four sides of
this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms; and it was lighted
from th