dispensable" to me. This or that little token or keepsake,
piles of letters I hate to burn, many dresses, etc., I cannot take
conveniently, lie around me, and I hardly know which to choose among
them, yet half _must_ be sacrificed; I can only take one trunk.

May 30th,
GREENWELL.

After all our trials and tribulations, here we are at last, and no
limbs lost! How many weeks ago was it since I wrote here? It seems very
long after all these events; let me try to recall them.

Wednesday the 28th,--a day to be forever remembered,--as luck would
have it, we rose very early, and had breakfast sooner than usual, it
would seem for the express design of becoming famished before dinner. I
picked up some of my letters and papers and set them where I could find
them whenever we were ready to go to Greenwell, burning a pile of trash
and leaving a quantity equally worthless, which were of no value even
to myself except from association. I was packing up my traveling-desk
with all Harry's little articles that were left to me, and other
things, and I was saying to myself that my affairs were in such
confusion that if obliged to run unexpectedly I would not know what to
save, when I heard Lilly's voice downstairs, crying as she ran in--she
had been out shopping--"Mr. Castle has killed a Federal officer on a
ship, and they are going to shell--" _Bang!_ went a cannon at the word,
and that was all our warning.

Mother had just come in, and was lying down, but sprang to her feet and
added her screams to the general confusion. Miriam, who had been
searching the libraries, ran up to quiet her; Lilly gathered her
children, crying hysterically all the time, and ran to the front door
with them as they were; Lucy saved the baby, naked as she took her from
her bath, only throwing a quilt over her. I bethought me of my
"running-bag" which I had used on a former case, and in a moment my few
precious articles were secured under my hoops, and with a sunbonnet on,
I stood ready for anything.

The firing still continued; they must have fired half a dozen times
before we could coax mother off. What awful screams! I had hoped never
to hear them again, after Harry died. Charlie had gone to Greenwell
before daybreak, to prepare the house, so we four women, with all those
children and servants, were left to save ourselves. I did not forget