SOON after we returned to Crowley Hill she determined to go to the North Carolina farms and see the people, so as to reassure them as to her taking care of them fully.

We started very early in the morning, Daddy Aleck driving, with baskets packed with lunch for the day and provisions to cook, for we expected to stay three or four days. The drive of thirty miles was charming until it got too hot, and we stopped under a tree by a spring, took out the horses and tied them in the shade and had our lunch, and rested until it became a little cooler. Loch Adèle, as we girls had named the farm, was a very pretty place with a mill and large pond, which we dignified into a loch, much to papa’s amusement. A pretty rolling country, and the Pee Dee River, called the Yadkin as soon as it passed the line from South to North Carolina, ran a small rocky stream about a mile from the rambling farmhouse. Flats had brought supplies in large quantities up the river from Chicora, and most of{214} the Charleston furniture had been brought by rail to Cheraw, fifteen miles away, and hauled out to this place, so that the house was thoroughly furnished, pictures hanging on the walls, because it seemed better than to keep them packed. The two lovely bas-reliefs of Thorwaldsen’s, “Night” and “Morning,” looked especially beautiful hanging on the white walls of the drawing-room, and the whole place was homelike and delightful with our Charleston belongings. And the poor negroes were so glad to see us and to realize that “Miss” was going to look after them and to the best of her ability take “Maussa’s” place. They wanted to hear all about papa’s illness and death and the funeral, and who had been honored by taking special place in it. Mamma was interviewed by each one separately, and had to repeat all the details over and over. She was very patient, to my great surprise, and, I think, to the people’s, too, for she had never been as willing to listen to their long rigmaroles as papa had been. But now she listened to all and consoled them and wept with them over their mutual loss. Altogether the visit did us both good.

Old Daddy Hamedy, who was head man on the place, had been a first-class carpenter and still{215} was, but when there was needed some one to take supervision of the farm and people up there, papa chose him on account of his character and intelligence. Papa had engaged a white man, a Mr. Yates, who lived some miles away, to give an eye to the place from time to time and write him how things went on, and Hamedy was to apply to Mr. Yates if anything went wron............