ONLY a few days after Daddy Aleck’s and Nelson’s return, Brutus came from Loch Adèle, bearing a piece of paper with hieroglyphics on it in pencil. After much studying over it by each one of us, we found it was a note from dear, faithful Daddy Hamedy: “Miss, cum at once. Mister Yates dun dribe de peeple.” Then mamma questioned the boy, not telling what trouble we had to make out the important document of which he was the bearer. He told his story. General Kilpatrick and the whole army had camped on the place a week. They had burned the gin-house after taking all the provisions they could carry away, and left the negroes without a thing to eat, and the whole country was the same—nothing to eat for the white people who belonged there any more than for them—and Mr. Yates had come to the farm the day before and told Daddy Hamedy they must all leave the country at once and go back down to the low country from which they came. Daddy{240} Hamedy had answered him civilly; he said it would take them a day to prepare, and as soon as Mr. Yates left he had started this runner, Brutus, off. He had travelled all night to bring it quick! Mamma praised him and gave him the best meal she could and told him to go to sleep. Everything was stirring that night, preparing for an early start. Mamma went over to see Mr. Evans and consulted him about it and told him she was going up the next day. He advised her greatly against it, but, finding he could not persuade her to give it up, he said he would ride on horseback along with us. He had saved his riding-horse by taking it in the swamp as Daddy Aleck had.

So at daylight the next morning we started; mamma and I in the carriage with a basket of cooked food, Daddy Aleck driving and Brutus beside him on the box, Mr. Evans riding beside the carriage. It was an awful experience, as it must always be to travel in the track of a destroying army. To begin with, the road was a quagmire. It took an experienced driver like Daddy Aleck to get us through, and even with all his care Brutus and Mr. Evans had often to get a rail from the fences along the road and pry our wheels out of the bog. We were never out of the sight of{241} dead things, and the stench was almost unbearable. Dead horses all along the way and, here and there, a leg or an arm sticking out of a hastily made too-shallow grave. Along the way ten cows dead in one pen, and then eight or ten calves dead in another. Dead hogs everywhere; the effort being to starve the inhabitants out, no living thing was left in a very abundant country. It is a country of small farms, just two-roomed houses; all now tightly shut up, no sign of life. Wells with all means of drawing water destroyed. We stopped at one or two houses and knocked without any response, but at last we knocked at one where a tall, pale woman opened a crack of the door wide enough to talk through. No, she had nothing; could not help us in any way to draw water. So Daddy Aleck got his halters and tied them together and let his horse-bucket down into the well, and I was so thirsty I drank, but mamma would not. As we got beyond Cheraw, fifteen miles on our way, we began to meet some of our people from Morven, who had started on their hundred-mile flight to the low country, in obedience to Mr. Yates’s mandate—forlorn figures, a pot sometimes balanced on the head, and a bundle of clothing swung on the back, a baby in arms,{242} sometimes one or two children trailing behind. Mamma stopped as we got to each traveller and told them to turn back; she had come to feed them and do all she could for them, and they need have no fear. To Daddy Aleck’s great indignation, she took some of the impedimenta from the most heavily loaded and we went on our way. We had made such an early start that few had gone more than a few miles, and all were so rejoiced to see mamma and so thankful to turn back that we began to feel quite cheerful.

It was lucky, for things were worse and worse as we went on; and when finally we got to pretty Loch Adèle a scene of desolation met us—every animal killed, and the negroes had had a kind of superstitious feeling about making use of the meat, or they could have cured meat enough to last the winter; for, though the Yankees had burned down the gin-house, with cotton and provisions and salt, they could not destroy the latter, and there, in a blackened mass, was a small mountain of salt. If Mr. Yates had been any good he could have seen to that. The house was not burned, but everything in it was broken to pieces—beds, sideboard, chairs, tables, and on the floor the fragments of the beautiful big medal{243}lions of “Night” and “Morning,” chopped into little pieces. I found one baby’s foot, whole, in the mass of rubbish, which I kept a long time, it was so beautiful, quite the size of a real baby’s.

We had a tremendous afternoon’s work to clear away and make the place habitable for the night, but Brutus worked with me and I got two women to help, and we managed to prop up a table and put boards over the bottomless chairs, and by supper-time, with a bright fire burning, for we had only brought two candles, it was quite a different-looking place. Mamma had brought two roast chickens and a piece of boiled bacon (as she had buried a box of bacon, fortunately) and a loaf of bread and some corn-dodgers which we toasted by the fire, so we had a good supper. The thing that worr............