ELSIE led Mrs. Cameron direct from the White House to the War Department.
"Well, Mrs. Cameron, what did you think of the President?" she asked.
"I hardly know," was the thoughtful answer. "He is the greatest man I ever met. One feels this instinctively."
When Mrs. Cameron was ushered into the Secretary's Office, Mr. Stanton was seated at his desk writing.
She handed the order of the President to a clerk, who gave it to the Secretary.
He was a man in the full prime of life, intellectual and physical, low and heavy set, about five feet eight inches in height and inclined to fat. His movements, however, were quick, and as he swung in his chair the keenest vigour marked every movement of body and every change of his countenance.
His face was swarthy and covered with a long, dark beard touched with gray. He turned a pair of little black piercing eyes on her and without rising said:
"So you are the woman who has a wounded son under sentence of death as a guerilla?"
"I am so unfortunate," she answered.
"Well, I have nothing to say to you," he went on in
