the place! You can go if
you wish; but, if you go, you can never come back!"

"Hi, Mistis," broke in Uncle Balla, "whar is I got to go? I wuz born
on dis place an' I 'spec' to die here, an' be buried right _yonder_;"
and he turned and pointed up to the dark clumps of trees that marked
the graveyard on the hill, a half mile away, where the colored people
were buried. "Dat I does," he affirmed positively. "Y' all sticks by
us, and we'll stick by you."

"I know I ain't gwine nowhar wid no Yankees or nothin'," said Lucy
Ann, in an undertone.

"Dee tell me dee got hoofs and horns," laughed one of the women in the
yard.

The boys' mother started to say something further to Balla, but though
she opened her lips, she did not speak; she turned suddenly and walked
into the house and into her chamber, where she shut the door behind
her. The boys thought she was angry, but when they softly followed her
a few minutes afterward, she got up hastily from where she had been
kneeling beside the bed, and they saw that she had been crying. A
murmur under the window called them back to the portico. It had begun
to grow dark; but a bright spot was glowing on the horizon, and on
this every one's gaze was fixed.

"Where is it, Balla? What is it?" asked the boys' mother, her voice
no longer strained and harsh, but even softer than usual.

"It's the depot, madam. They's burnin' it. That man told me they was
burnin' ev'ywhar they went."

"Will they be here to-night?" asked his mistress.

"No, marm; I don' hardly think they will. That man said they couldn't
travel more than thirty miles a day; but they'll be plenty of 'em here
to-morrow--to breakfast." He gave a nervous sort of laugh.

"Here,--you all come here," said their mistress to the servants. She
went to the smoke-house and unlocked it. "Go in there and get down the
bacon--take a piece, each of you." A great deal was still left.
"Balla, step here." She called him aside and spoke earnestly in an
undertone.

"Yes'm, that's so; that's jes' what I wuz gwine do," the boys heard
him say.

Their mother sent the boys out. She went and locked herself in her
room, but they heard her footsteps as she turned about within, and now
and then they heard her opening and shutting drawers and moving
chairs.

In a little while she came out.

"Frank, you and Willy go and tell Balla to come to the chamber door.
He may be out in the stable."

They dashed out, proud to bear so important a mess