r; yet
at a certain point in the sweetness I became dumb.

Along in May, '65, "mother" got a package from Washington. It contained
a tin-type of herself; a card with a hole in it (made evidently by
having been forced over a button), on which was her name and the old
address in town; then there was a ring and a saber, and on the blade of
the saber was etched, "Presented to Lieutenant Jas. Dillon, for bravery
on the field of battle." At the bottom of the parcel was a note in a
strange hand, saying simply, "Found on the body of Lieutenant Dillon
after the battle of Five Forks."

Poor "mother!" Her heart was wrung again, and again the scalding tears
fell. She never told her suffering, and no one ever knew what she bore.
Her face was a little sadder and sweeter, her hair a little whiter--that
was all.

I am not a bit superstitious--don't believe in signs or presentiments or
prenothings--but when I went to get my pay on the 14th day of December,
1866, it gave me a little start to find in it the bill bearing the
chromo of the Goddess of Liberty with the little three-cornered piece of
court-plaster that Dillon had put on her wind-pipe. I got rid of it at
once, and said nothing to "mother" about it; but I kept thinking of it
and seeing it all the next day and night.

On the night of the 16th, I was oiling around my Black Maria to take out
a local leaving our western terminus just after dark, when a tall, slim
old gentleman stepped up to me and asked if I was the engineer. I don't
suppose I looked like the president: I confessed, and held up my torch,
so I could see his face--a pretty tough-looking face. The white mustache
was one of that military kind, reinforced with whiskers on the right and
left flank of the mustache proper. He wore glasses, and one of the
lights was ground glass. The right cheek-bone was crushed in, and a red
scar extended across the eye and cheek; the scar looked blue around the
red line because of the cold.

"I used to be an engineer before the war," said he. "Do you go to
Boston!"

"No, to M----."

"M----! I thought that was on a branch."

"It is, but is now an important manufacturing point, with regular trains
from there to each end of the main line."

"When can I get to Boston?"

"Not till Monday now; we run no through Sunday trains. You can go to
M---- with me to-night, and catch a local to Boston in the morning."

He thought a minute, and then said, "Well, yes; guess I had better. How
i