tched the
walls crumble and fall, and then he walked over to the little cabin
where the overseer had his office, and he set down and dropped his
head in his hands and never stirred nor spoke all the rest of the
night. And the next day he was still sittin' there when one of Miss
Amaryllis's slaves come in and handed him a letter. He took it and
read it, and they said he acted like somebody raised from the dead. He
rushed to the stable and saddled his horse and got to The Cedars ahead
of the slave that'd brought the letter, and when he got there every
servant on the place was standin' at the gate bowin' and scrapin' and
sayin': 'Howdy, mahster! Howdy, mahster!' and Miss Sempronia met him
at the door and says she: 'Walk up-stairs, sir. Your room is ready.
Miss Amaryllis herself fixed it for you.' And Hamilton followed her,
not knowin' what it all meant, and expectin' every minute to see Miss
Amaryllis; and when they got up-stairs Miss Sempronia showed him his
room and handed him another letter, and then she went on down-stairs,
leavin' him to read the letter.

"And what do you reckon Miss Amaryllis had done? Why, she'd given him
The Cedars--the house and everything in it and all the slaves that
belonged to the place. I reckon Hamilton was like Brother Wilson when
he got his weddin' fee from the squire. He couldn't take it in at
first, and when he begun to see what she'd done he run out o' the room
and down-stairs callin' her name: 'Amaryllis! Amaryllis!' And the
housekeeper, she met him at the bottom o' the stairs, and says she,
'Miss Amaryllis is not here.' And says he, 'Not here? Then where is
she?' And Miss Sempronia says, 'That's something that nobody knows.
You know Miss Amaryllis is not in the habit of giving an account of
herself to other people, and all I know is that she left The Cedars
early this morning on horseback, but where she went I can't say, and
as to her coming back,' says she, 'the place belongs to you now, and
it wouldn't be proper for her to be here.'

"'Which way did she go?' says Hamilton. 'Tell me that.'

"'She went towards town,' says Miss Sempronia. And before the words
was out of her mouth, Hamilton was out o' the front door and on his
way to town. They said he stopped everybody he met on the road and
asked if they'd seen Miss Amaryllis, and when he got to town, he found
out that Miss Amaryllis had been seen gettin' into the stage and goin'
in the direction of Bell's Tavern. So he set out for