water on the sugar and the
mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give
it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.

Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like
her father. She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too. My nigger
had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more
--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings
round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods
daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families
--mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and well
born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons
and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two
mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our
folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:

"Quick! Jump for the woods!"

We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty
soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse
easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I
had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's
gun go off at my ear, and Harney's