it to tote water to the house. She said
she never bothered it. He said he could trust her and she wouldn't
tell a lie. He took another sack of money over the mountains and the
silverware. His wife died during the war. A lot of people died from
hearing of the war--heart failure. I don't know what become of his
money. He lost it. He may forgot where he hid it. It was after his wife
died that he sold mama to Jim Alexander's papa.

"The Yankees rode three years over the country in squads and colored
folks didn't know they was free. I have seen them in their old uniforms
riding around when I was a child. White folks started talking about
freedom fore the darkies and turning them loose with the clothes they
had on and what they could tote away. No land, no home, no place; they
roamed around.

"When it was freedom the thing papa done was go to a place and start out
share croppin'. Folks had no horses or mules. They had to plough new
ground with oxen. I ploughed when I was a girl, ploughed oxen. If you
had horses or mules and the Yankees come along three or four years after
the war, they would swap horses, ride a piece, and if they had a chance
swap horses again. Stealing went on during and long after the war.

"The Ku Klux was awful in South Carolina. The colored folks had no
church to go to. They gather around at folks' houses to have preaching
and prayers. One night we was having it at our house, only I was the
oldest and was in another room sound asleep on the bed. There was a
crowd at our house. The Ku Klux come, pulled off his robe and door face,
hung it up on a nail in the room, and said, 'Where's that Jim Jesus?' He
pulled him out the room. The crowd run off. Mama took the three little
children but forgot me and run off too. They beat papa till they thought
he was dead and throwed him in a fence corner. He was beat nearly to
death, just cut all to pieces. He crawled to my bed and woke me up and
back to the steps. I thought he was dead--bled to death--on the steps.
Mama come back to leave and found he was alive. She doctored him up and
he lived thirty years after that. We left that morning.

"The old white woman that owned the place was rich--big rich. She been
complaining about the noise--singing and preaching. She called him
Praying Jim Jesus till he got to be called that around. He prayed in
the field. She said he disturbed her. Mama said one of the Ku Klux she
knowed been raised up there close to Master Barton's b