hogshead, down on the wharf, superintending some negroes load a wagon,
and I couldn't get it out of my head that I'd seen his face before. He
was tall, and fair, and had lost an arm. I must have met him during
the war, I think, although I'll be hanged if I can place him."

Mrs. Smith looked interested. "Perhaps you formerly knew him," she
remarked, cheerfully; "it's a pity your memory is so bad. Why didn't
you inquire his name of some one, that might have helped you to place
him?"

"My memory is excellent," retorted the general, shortly; for a man must
resent such an insinuation even from the wife of his bosom. "I've
always been remarkable for an unusually strong and retentive memory, as
you know very well--but it isn't superhuman. At the lowest
computation, I guess I've seen about a million men's faces in the
course of my life, and it's ridiculous to expect me to have 'em all
sorted out, and ticketed in my mind like a picture catalogue. My
memory is very fine."

Mrs. Smith recanted pleasantly. Her husband's memory _was_ good, for
his age, she was willing to admit, but it was not flawless. About this
young man, now, it seemed to her that if she could remember him at all,
she could remember all about him. These hitches in recollection were
provoking. It would have been nice for the girls to find a young man
ready to their hands, bound to courtesy by previous acquaintance with
their father.

She regretted that her husband should fail to recall, and had neglected
to inquire, the name of this interesting person; but the knowledge that
he was _there_, and others besides him, ameliorated the rigor of the