dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they
had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of
Richards's paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had
used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we
all fell to talking of old times,--old they seem now, though it is not a
year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last
order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government-callendered paper
of _surete?_ We never got it, and I never knew why."

"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.

"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in
the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of
the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue
of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country
cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers
ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really
very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new
they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the Bank of
France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited
three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We
never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in
March."

Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his
teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,
both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.

"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died
before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no
secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it
happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant
little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever
pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought
all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers
screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I
tried it myself every way; back current; I tried; forward current; high
feed; low freed, I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.
Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off
every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother,
there, worked all night