things went smoothly in the stately old house known to
Charleston people as the "Pickens Mansion." The cotton was regularly
harvested on the Sea Islands, and on the Beaufort plantation, which
belonged to Annie; for little Annie, too, was an heiress, with acres and
negroes of her own. War seemed an easy thing in those days, and a
glorious one. There was no lack felt anywhere; only a set of fresh and
exciting interests in lives which had always been interesting enough.
Mrs. Pickens and the other Charleston ladies scraped lint and rolled
bandages with busy fingers; but they smiled at each other as they did
so, and said that these would never be needed, there would never be any
real fighting! They stood on their balconies to cheer and applaud the
incoming regiments,--regiments of gallant young men, their own sons and
the sons of neighbors: and it was like the opening chapter of a story.
Ah! the story had run through many chapters since then, and what
different ones! The smart uniforms had lost all their gloss, blood was
upon the flags, the glory had changed to ashes; every family wore
mourning for somebody. The pleasant Charleston home, where Mrs. Pickens
had stood on the balcony to watch the gray-coated troops pass by, and
little Annie had fluttered her mite of a handkerchief, and laughed as
the gay banners danced in air, where was it? Burned to the ground; only
a sorry heap of ruin marked where once it stood. No more cotton bales
came from the Sea Islands. First one army, then the other, had swept
over the Beaufort plantation, trampling its fields into mire. It had
been seized, confiscated, retaken, re-confiscated, sold to this person
and that. Nobody knew exactly to whom it belonged nowadays; but it was
not to little Annie, rightful heiress of all. Stripped of every thing,
reduced to utter want, Mrs. Pickens and her daughter took refuge in a
lonely village, far up among the Carolina hills, where some former
friends, also ruined by the war, offered them the wretched home where
now we find them. Little Annie, sole blossom left upon the blasted tree,
went with them. It was a miserable life which they led. The pinch of
poverty is never so keenly felt as when the recollection of better days
mixes with it like a perpetual sting. All the bright hopes of six years
before were over, and the poor ladies could have said, "Behold, was ever
sorrow like unto my sorrow!" They grieved for themselves; they grieved
most of all for their be