r
friendship then and there, and as he grew up straight and sturdy, the
friendship ripened. That he teased her and laughed at her did not in the
least offend her. No one else could have taken such a liberty with
her, but Cabell's references to old Caesar's declining health, and his
innuendoes whenever she was "fixed up" that she was "looking around" in
advance only amused her. It made no difference to her that he was poor,
while several others of Betty's beaux were rich. He was "a gent'man,"
and she was an aristocrat.

At times they had pitched battles, but each knew that the other was an
ally.

Cabell won his final victory by an audacity which few would have dared
venture on. Among his rivals was one Mr. Hereford, whom he particularly
disliked, partly because he frequently "outsat" him, and partly because
he thought Miss Betty favored his attentions too much, and whom Mammy
Lyddy detested because he always ignored her. Cabell charged her with
deserting his cause and going over to the side of Mr. Hereford, and
threatened to carry off the prize in spite of her and her ally.

"You cyant cyah off nothin'," she said with a sniff of mock disdain.
His eyes snapped. Without a word he seized her, and notwithstanding her
resistance he lifted her, and flinging her over his shoulder, as if she
had been a sack of corn, stalked up the steps and into the house, where
he set her down abashed and vanquished before her astonished young
mistress. The old woman pretended to be furious, but that day Cabell
Graeme carried off more than Mam' Lyddy.

When Cabel and pretty Betty were married, Mam' Lyddy threw in her lot
with "her lamb."

Through all the evil days of carpet-bag rule, no white, not even Cabell
Graeme himself, who was a leader of the young men, had looked with more
burning contempt on the new-comers, or shown a sterner front to the
miscreants who despoiled the country. And when Negro rule was at its
worst, Mam' Lyddy was its most bitter reviler. Cabell Graeme was a
captain among the young men who finally put down the evil element that
had been running its riotous course. And during the fierce fight that
was waged, he was much away from home; but he knew that in Mam' Lyddy he
had left as redoubtable a guardian of his wife and babies as ever kept
watch on a picket line.

Among the most obnoxious of the colored leaders was one Amos Brown, a
young negro with some education, who to the gift of fluency added enough
shrewdness t