d by the light of huge pine
torches she watched the boat hands send the yellow turpentine barrels
down the steep bank in a long string, or pass cord-wood on board from
hand to hand. The excited negroes, their white teeth and eyeballs
glistening in the surrounding darkness to which their faces formed no
relief; the white officers in brown linen, shouting, swearing, and
gesticulating; the yellow, flickering torchlight over all,--made up a
scene of which the weird interest would have appealed to a more blase
traveler than this girl upon her first journey.

During the day, Warwick had taken his meals in the dining-room, with
the captain and the other cabin passengers. It was learned that he was
a South Carolina lawyer, and not a carpet-bagger. Such credentials were
unimpeachable, and the passengers found him a very agreeable traveling
companion. Apparently sound on the subject of negroes, Yankees, and
the righteousness of the lost cause, he yet discussed these themes in a
lofty and impersonal manner that gave his words greater weight than if
he had seemed warped by a personal grievance. His attitude, in fact,
piqued the curiosity of one or two of the passengers.

"Did your people lose any niggers?" asked one of them.

"My father owned a hundred," he replied grandly.

Their respect for his views was doubled. It is easy to moralize about
the misfortunes of others, and to find good in the evil that they
suffer;--only a true philosopher could speak thus lightly of his own
losses.

When the steamer tied up at the wharf at Wilmington, in the early
morning, the young lawyer and a veiled lady passenger drove in the same
carriage to a hotel. After they had breakfasted in a private room,
Warwick explained to his sister the plan he had formed for her future.
Henceforth she must be known as Miss Warwick, dropping the old name
with the old life. He would place her for a year in a boarding-school
at Charleston, after which she would take her place as the mistress of
his house. Having imparted this information, he took his sister for a
drive through the town. There for the first time Rena saw great ships,
which, her brother told her, sailed across the mighty ocean to distant
lands, whose flags he pointed out drooping lazily at the mast-heads.
The business portion of the town had "an ancient and fishlike smell,"
and most of the trade seemed to be in cotton and naval stores and
products of the sea. The wharves were piled high