THE excitement through which Tom Camp had passed in the death of his daughter, and the stirring events connected with it, had been more than his feeble body could endure. He had been stricken with paroxysms of pain and nausea from his old wounds. For three days and nights he had suffered unspeakable agonies. He had borne his pain with stoical indifference.

“Tom, old man, do look at me! You skeer me,” said his wife leaning tenderly over him.

“Oh! I’m all right, Annie.”

“What was you studyin’ about then?”

“I was just a thinkin’ we didn’t kill babies in the war. Them was awful times, but they wuz nothin’ to what we’re goin’ through now. The Lord knows best, but I can’t understand it.”

“Well, don’t talk any more. You’re too weak.”

“I must git up, Annie. Got to git out anyhow. The Sheriff’s goin’ to sell us out to-day, and I want to sorter look ’round once before we go.”

So, leaning on his wife’s arm, he hobbled around the place saying good-bye to its familiar objects. They stopped before the garden gate.

“Don’t go in there, Tom, I can’t stand it,” cried his wife. “When I think of leavin’ that garden I’ve worked so hard on all these years, and that’s give us so many good things to eat, and never failed us the year round, I just feel like it’ll tear my heart out.”

“Do you mind the day we set out these trees, Annie, an’ you, my own purty gal holdin’ ’em fur me while I packed the dirt around ’em, and told you how sweet you wuz?”

“Yes, and I love every twig of ’em. They’ve all helped me in times of need. Oh! Lord, it’s hard to give it up!” She couldn’t keep back the tears.

“Well, now, ole woman, you mustn’t break down. You’re strong and well and I’m all shot to pieces and crippled and no ’count. But the Lord still lives. We’ll get this place back. The Lord’s just trying our faith. He thinks mebbe I’ll give up.”

“You think we can ever get it back?”

“General Worth sent me word he couldn’t do anything now, but to let it go and keep a stiff upper lip. The General ain’t no fool.”

“Surely the Lord can’t let us starve.”

“Starve! I reckon not! The foxes have holes, the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head, but He never starved. No, God’s in Heaven. I’ll trust Him.”

A mocking bird whose mate had just built her nest to rear a second brood for the season was seated on the topmost branch of a cedar near the house, and singing as though he would fill heaven and earth with the glory of his love.

“Just listen at that bird, Tom!” whispered his wife. “He does sing sweet, don’t he?”

“Oh dear, oh dear, how can I give it all up! I’ve fed that bird and his mate for years. He knows my voice. I can call him down out of that tree. Many a night when you were away in the war he sat close to my window and sang softly to me all night. When I’d wake, I’d hear him singin’ low like he was afraid he’d wake somebody. I’d sit down there by the window and cry for you and dream of your comin’ home till he’d sing me to sleep in the chair. And now we’ve got to leave him. Oh Lord, my heart is broken! I can’t see the way!”

She buried her face on Tom’s shoulder and shook with sobs.

“Hush, hush, honey, we must face trouble. We are used to it.”

“But not this, Tom. It’ll tear my heart out when I have to leave.”

“It can’t be helped, Annie. We’ve got to pay for this nigger government.”

Eleven o’clock was the hour fixed for the sale. At half past ten a crowd of negroes had gathered. There were only two or three white men present, the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau and some of his henchmen.

They began to inspect the place. Tim Shelby was present, dressed in a suit of broadcloth and a silk hat placed jauntily on his close-cropped scalp.

“That’s a fine orchard, gentlemen,” Tim exclaimed.

“Yes, en dats er fine gyarden,” said a negro standing near.

“Let’s look at the house,” said Tim starting to the door.

Tom stood up in the doorway with a musket in his hand, “Put your foot on that doorstep and I’ll blow your brains out, you flat-nosed baboon!”

Tim paused and bowed with a smile.

“Ain’t the premises for sale, Mr. Camp?”

“Yes, but my family ain’t for inspection by niggers.”

“Just wanted to see the condition of the house, sir,” said Tim still smiling.

“Well, I’m livin’ here yet, and don’t you forget it,” answered Tom with quiet emphasis. Tim walked away laughing.

Tom stepped out of the house, and with his wooden leg marked a dead line around the house about ten feet from each corner. To the crowd that stood near he said in a clear ringing voice as he stood up in the doorway.



0158

“I’ll kill the first nigger that crosses that line.”

There was no attempt to cross it. They did not like the look of Tom’s face as he sat there pale and silent. And they could hear the sobs of his wife inside.

The sale was a brief formality. There was but one bidder, the Honourable Tim Shelby. It was knocked down to Tim for the sum of eighty-five dollars, the exact amount of the tax levy which Legree and his brigands had fixed.

Tim was not buying on his own account. He was the purchasing agent of the subsidiary ring which Legree had organised to hold the real estate forfeited for taxes until a rise in value would bring them millions of profit. They had stolen from the state Treasury the money to capitalise this company. Where it was possible to exact a cash ransom, they always took it and cancelled the tax order, preferring the certainty of good gold in their pockets to the uncertainties of politics.

They tried their best to get a cash ransom of ten thousand dollars for the town of Hambright. But the ruined people could not raise a thousand. So Tim Shelby as the agent of the “union Land and Improvement Company,” became the owner of farm after farm and home after home.

It was a vain hope that relief could come from any quarter. The red flag of the Sheriff’s auctioneer fluttered from two thousand three hundred and twenty doors in the county. This was over two-thirds of the total.

Those who were saved, just escaped by the skin of their teeth. They sold old jewelry or plate that had been hidden in the war, or they sold their corn and provisions, trusting to their ability to live on dried fruit, berries, walnuts, hickory nuts, and such winter vegetables as they could raise in their gardens.

The Preacher secured for Tom a tumbled-down log cabin on the outskirts of town, with a half-acre of poor red hill land around it, which his wife at once transformed into a garden. She took up the bulbs and flowers that she had tended so lovingly about the door of their old home, and planted them with tears around this desolate cabin. Now and then she would look down at the work and cry. Then she would go bravely back to it. As nobody occupied her old home, she went back and forth until she moved all the jonquils and sweet pinks from the borders of the garden walk, and reset them in the new garden. She moved then her strawberries and rapsberries, and gooseberries, and set her fall cabbage plants. In three weeks she had transformed a desolate red clay lot into a smiling garden. She had watered every plant daily, and Tom had watched her with growing wonder and love.

“Ole woman, you’re an angel!” he cried, “if God had sent one down from the skies she couldn’t have done any more.”





The problem which pressed heaviest of all on the Preacher’s heart in this crisis was how to save Mrs. Gaston’s home.

“If that place is sold next week, my dear,” he said to his wife, “she will never survive.”

“I know it. She is sinking every day. It breaks my heart to look at her.”

“What can we do?”

“I’m sure I can’t tell. We’ve given everything we have on earth except the clothes on our back. I haven’t another piece of jewelry, or even an old dress.”

“The tax and the costs may amount to a hundred and seventy-five dollars. There isn’t a man in this county who has that much money, or I’d borrow it if I had to mortgage my body and soul to do it.”

“I’ll tell you what you might do,” his wife suddenly exclaimed. “Telegraph your old college mate in Boston that you will accept his invitation to supply his pulpit those last two Sundays in August. They will pay you handsomely.”

“It may be possible, but where am I to get the money for a telegram and a ticket?”

“Surely you can borrow some here!”

“I don’t know a man in the county who has it.”

“Then go to the young Commandant of the post here. Tell him the facts. Tell him that a widow of a brave Confederate soldier is about to be turned out of her home because she can’t pay the taxes levied by this infamous negro government. Ask him to loan you the money for the telegram and the ticket.”

The Preacher seized his hat and made his way as fast as possible to the camp. The young Captain heard his story with grave courtesy.

“Certainly, doctor,” he said, “I’ll loan you the forty dollars with pleasure. I wish I could do more to relieve the distress of the people. Believe me, sir, the people of the North do not dream of the awful conditions of the South. They are being fooled by the politicians. I’ll thank God when I am relieved of this job and get home. What has amazed me is that you hot-headed Southern people have stood it thus far. I don’t know a Northern community that would have endured it.”

“Ah, Captain, the people are heartsick of bloodshed, They surrendered in good faith. They couldn’t foresee this. If they had”—

The Preacher paused, his eyes grew misty with tears, and he looked thoughtfully out on the blue mountain peaks that loomed range after range in the distance until the last bald tops were lost in the clouds.

“If General Lee had dreamed of such an infamy being forced on the South two years after his surrender, as this attempt to make the old slaves the rulers of their masters, ............