"At once, mother. I wrote to Lucy the day we were disbanded, saying that
I should come in a week, and would allow another week and no longer for
her to get ready."

"Then, in that case, Vincent, Annie and I will go down with you. Annie
will not have much to do to get ready for her own wedding. It must, of
course, be a very quiet one, and there will be no array of dresses to
get; for I suppose it will be some time yet before the railways are open
again and things begin to come down from the North."

Happily Antioch had escaped the ravages of war, and there was nothing to
mar the happiness of the wedding. Lucy's father had returned, having
lost a leg in one of the battles of the Wilderness a year before, and
her brother had also escaped. After the wedding they returned to their
farm in Tennessee, and Mrs. Wingfield, Annie, Vincent, and Lucy went back
to the Orangery.

For the next three or four years times were very hard in Virginia, and
Mrs. Wingfield had to draw upon her savings to keep up the house in its
former state; while the great majority of the planters were utterly
ruined. The negroes, however, for the most part remained steadily
working on the estate. A few wandered away, but their places were easily
filled; for the majority of the freed slaves very soon discovered that
their lot was a far harder one than it had been before, and that freedom
so suddenly given was a curse rather than a blessing to them.

Thus, while so many went down, the Wingfields weathered the storm, and
the step that had been taken in preparing their hands for the general
abolition of slavery was a complete success.

With the gradual return of prosperity to the South the prices of produce
improved, and ten years after the conclusion of the rebellion the income
of the Orangery was nearly as large as it had been previous to its
outbreak. Vincent, two years after the conclusion of the struggle, took
his wife over to visit his relations in England, and, since the death of
his mother, in 1879, has every year spent three or four months at home,
and will not improbably, ere long sell his estates in Virginia and
settle here altogether.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of With Lee in Virginia, by G. A. Henty

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