first
thanks are not to him. Those of us who ever had our heads knocked open,
like the Major and me, do know. Fill your glasses, gentlemen; I give you
'the Special Diet Kitchen.'"

He took them all by surprise. There was a general shout; and the ladies
all rose, and dropped mock courtesies.

"By Jove!" said Barthow to the Colonel, afterwards, "It was the best
toast I ever drank in my life. Anyway, that little woman has saved my
life. Do you say she did the same to you?"

III.

CHRISTMAS AGAIN.

So you think that when the war was over Major Barthow, then
Major-General, remembered Huldah all the same, and came on and persuaded
her to marry him, and that she is now sitting in her veranda, looking
down on the Pamunkey River. You think that, do not you?

Well! you were never so mistaken in your life. If you want that story,
you can go and buy yourself a dime novel. I would buy "The Rescued
Rebel;" or, "The Noble Nurse," if I were you.

After the war was over, Huldah did make Colonel Barthow and his wife a
visit once, at their plantation in Pocataligo County; but I was not
there, and know nothing about it.

Here is a Christmas of hers, about which she wrote a letter; and, as it
happens, it was a letter to Mrs. Barthow.

HULDAH ROOT TO AGNES BARTHOW.

VILLERS-BOCAGE, Dec. 27, 1868.

... Here I was, then, after this series of hopeless blunders,
sole alone at the _gare_ [French for station] of this little
out-of-the-way town. My dear, there was never an American here
since Christopher Columbus slept here when he was a boy. And
here, you see, I was like to remain; for there was no
possibility of the others getting back to me till to-morrow, and
no good in my trying to overtake them. All I could do was just
to bear it, and live on, and live through from Thursday to
Monday; and, really, what was worst of all was that Friday was
Christmas day.

Well, I found a funny little carriage, with a funny old man who
did not understand my _patois_ any better than I did his; but he
understood a franc-piece. I had my guide-book, and I said
_auberge_; and we came to the oddest, most outlandish, and
old-fashioned establishment that ever escaped from one of Julia
Nathalie woman's novels. And here I am.

And the reason, my dear Mrs. Barthow, that I take to-day to
write to you, you and the Colonel will now understand. You see
it was o