he outgeneralled Beauregard clearly, and failed only
because of a fact that is going to be impressed frequently upon the
Northern mind in this war; that fact is that the Southern troops do not
know when they are beaten. McDowell defeated Beauregard, so far as those
two are concerned; but his army failed, and he must be sacrificed; the
North ought, however, to sacrifice the army."

"What do you mean by that, Doctor?"

"I mean that war is wrong; it is always so. It is essentially unjust and
narrow. You have given up your power to be just; you cannot do what you
know to be just. You act under compulsion, having yielded your freedom.
A losing general is sacrificed, regardless of his real merit."

"Was it so in Washington's case?"

"Washington's first efforts were successful; had he been, defeated at
Boston, he would have been superseded--unless, indeed, the colonies had
given up the struggle."

"And independence would have been lost?"

"No; I do not say that. The world had need of American independence."

For half an hour we sat thus talking, the Doctor doing the most of it,
and giving full rein to his philosophically impersonal views of the
immediate questions involved in the national struggle. He rose at last,
and left me thinking of his strange personality and wondering why,
holding such views, be should throw his energies into either side.

He returned presently, bringing me a letter from my father. He waited as
I opened it, and when I asked leave to read it, he said for answer, as
if still thinking of our conversation:--

"Jones, my boy, there is a future for you. I can imagine circumstances
in which your peculiar powers of memory would accomplish more genuine
good than could a thousand bayonets; good night."

Before I went to bed I had written my father a long letter. Then, I lay
down, oppressed with thought.

VI

THE USES OF INFIRMITY

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."

--BROWNING.

The next morning Lydia was missing from the breakfast table. The Doctor
said that she had gone to her room--which was at a friend's house in
Georgetown--to rest. She had brought from Willis a request that I should
come to see him.

"You are getting back to your normal conditio