[Evolution] Disaster strikes -- 4000 messages deleted

[Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh pacbell net>]

One of my important folders <Phred>, containing about 4000 messages, was
moved into a subfolder of another folder and all the messages in <Phred>
were deleted.  The messages are truly gone; unchecking "Hide Deleted
Messages" does not show them.

Fortunately I have a backup of my entire system as of just before this
disaster.  Is there some way to restore the contents of just this
folder, or (better) to merge in messages from the backup into the
current folder collection?

This may possibly be related to some maintenance I did on evolution just
before this happened, namely emptying the trash (File->Empty Trash) and
vacuuming the database (as shown at the bottom).  I am about to take a
brief look to see if any other folders have been similarly damaged.  All
my messages are on a local drive.  


Any help much appreciated - jon

========> vacuuming the database <========
cd ~/.evolution/mail/
for i in `find . -name folders.db`
        do
        ls -lh $i
        echo "Rebuilding Table $i"
        sqlite3 $i "vacuum;"
        ls -lh $i
        echo
done