“—so cipher on. Maybe it’s the casualty numbers.”

Earlier dispatches from McClellan had described an attack across a dam on the Warwick River, an attempt to pierce rebel positions before Yorktown, but it seemed that McClellan had lost his nerve once the Vermonters who led the attack gained a toehold. This did not surprise Halsey. Back in October, McClellan had not even bothered himself about the crossing at Ball’s Bluff. Maybe it was something about rivers.…

But Halsey did not share his thoughts with the president. It was not his place. Instead he busied himself with paperwork at his desk in the corner.

Bates put his head to the work in front of him.

Lincoln took a pencil and small red leather-bound notebook from his pocket and began to write.

Then Bates looked up. “Mr. President, I’ve been working in this office for the better part of a year, and I’m puzzled about something.”

Lincoln said, “What is it?”

“Whenever you read through the telegrams, sir, when you get to the last one, you always say you’re ‘down to the raisins.’ Why is that?”

Lincoln chuckled and cocked his head.

Halsey sensed a story coming on.

“Well, now—” Lincoln tossed the notebook onto the desk, then leaned back in the chair and unfolded those long legs, so that they seemed to travel halfway across the room.

Yes, thought Halsey, another story.

“There was this little girl back in Springfield,” Lincoln began. “And it was her birthday. And she ate so much raisin-and-spice cake—the kind with the thick white butter-frostin’—that she looked like a foundered horse, with a belly so full, she could barely move and sickly-white skin the same color as that frostin’. And right after her little friends left, she took to castin’ up her accounts.”

“You mean she vomited?” asked Halsey.

“Lieutenant, you do make me wonder what my son can be learning at that Harvard College. Castin’, pukin’, chuckin’, tossin’ … all fine euphemisms for the act of vomiting.”

“If my experience with the Harvard punch bowl is any indication, sir, your son will be familiar enough with the act if not with the terminology.”

“Well, every boy must learn his lessons,” said Lincoln, “though I have to admit that the taste of spirits never held much interest for me.”

“But, sir,” said Homer Bates, “the raisins?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lincoln. “The little girl kept pukin’ for so long, her parents thought she might cast up her very own stomach and die right then, right on her birthday. So they sent for the doctor. He came and gave her belly a listen, then he asked to see the last thing she’d tossed. So they brought him the chamber pot. He took one look at the little black bits floatin’ in the pot bottom, and said, ‘Folks, don’t you worry none at all. She’ll be better and better soon, ’cause she’s down to the raisins.’”

After a moment Bates’s moon face brightened and he laughed.

Halsey managed a smile. “‘Down to the raisins.’ That means her stomach’s empty … nothing more to see.”

“Just that,” said Lincoln. “So … when I read through the pile to the message I saw on my last visit, I know that I need go no further, because I’m down to the raisins.”

“Well, sir—” Bates got up and gave him a sheet of yellow paper. “—have a raisin.”

Lincoln laughed, took the dispatch, and read.

First, his little smile fell off. Then his voice lost all good humor. “Three Vermont companies. Thirty-nine casualties. Thirty-nine more sons with grieving mothers. And the position abandoned.” He held the dispatch for a moment; then he let it flutter to the floor, as if it were simply too heavy.

Halsey and Bates looked at each other and waited for Lincoln to speak again. It was several minutes.

Then Lincoln raised his head from contemplation of the carpet pattern and said, “Is there anything else?”

Bates whispered, “Not for a while, sir.”

Lincoln stood. “Then I’m off to bed.”

Halsey got up and followed Lincoln to the door. “Mr.