larder, patched, refurbished clothing, servantless homes--in dismantled
outhouses, broken fences and neglected, brier-choked fields. Even the
staples of life were fast diminishing for every man who could shoulder
a gun had gone to fight with Lee, and few animals were left and fewer
slaves.

* * * * *

Yet, for all the dismal outlook, Winter had passed without actual
disaster to the Confederate arms and now that Spring had come the
plantation home of the Herbert Carys, twenty miles below Richmond, had
never had a fairer setting. White-pillared and stately the old Colonial
mansion stood on one of the low, emerald hills which roll back lazily
from the peaceful James. It was true that the flower beds had been
trampled down to ruin by alien horse and heel, but the scent of the
honeysuckle clinging to those shining pillars only seemed the sweeter
for the loss, and whatever else the forager might take, he could not rob
them of their gracious vista of hills and shimmering river.

Across the broad driveway and up the steps of the veranda passed Mrs.
Cary, fairer than had been the flowers, a true daughter of the oldtime
South, gentle and quiet eyed, her light summer dress of the cheapest
material, yet deftly fashioned by her own fingers from slightly opened
neck, where an old brooch lay against her soft throat, down to the
dainty spotless flounces lying above her petticoat of crinoline.

Though her lips and eyes refused to betray it even when there was no one
to see, it was with a very heavy heart that she mounted the stairs to
the attic, thinking, contriving, clutching desperately at her fading
hopes.

For good reason the plantation was very silent on this warm spring
morning. Where only a year before dozens of soft eyed Jerseys had ranged
through the pastures and wood lots there was now no sound of tinkling
bells--one after another the fine, blooded stock had been requisitioned
by a sad faced quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia. And one
by one the fat porkers who had muzzled greedily among the ears from the
Cary bins and who ought to have gone into the smoke house had departed,
squealing, to furnish bone and sinew with which to repel the invader.
Saddest of all, the chicken coops down by the deserted negro quarters
were quite as empty as the once teeming cabins themselves. Poverty, grim
and relentless, had caught the Carys in its iron hand and behind
Poverty stood its far more frig