wing up a green
stem with a pink terminal bud, which in August had burst into a spike of
crimson flowers. Curious lichens cover the rough trunks of these
oaks--some gray, some ashy-white, some pink, some scarlet like blotches
of blood. The _Mitchella_, the little partridge-berry, is here in bloom,
and has been since the year came in.

The marsh that borders the beach-hammock and spreads a sea of silvery
green before the mansion is not barren of attractions. Inquisitive and
faint-hearted fiddler-crabs are darting in and out of their holes in the
mud: an alligator now and then shows a hint of a head above the water of
the creek, along whose banks walk daintily and proudly egrets and herons
robed in white, and from the reeds of which myriads of water-hens send
up a deafening chatter.

Midway between the mansion and the beach, in the southern corner of the
orchard of olive trees, which overhang and surround it, is the graveyard
of the family. It is the last object to which in this narrative I call
attention, but to the visitor it is the most interesting, the fullest of
memories of the past. By a winding and secluded path from the deserted
garden, along the banks of the solitary marsh, beneath great water-oaks
hung with funereal moss, one reaches this little cemetery, a few roods
of ground walled in from the adjoining copsewood--

A lonesome acre, thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Three tombs and three headstones indicate at least six of the graves
with which this little lot is filled. In one of these graves rest the
bones of her who shared the fortunes of the gallant general, the
"Washington of the South," when he rested after the last decisive battle
and retired to his Georgia plantation. In another lies buried his
daughter, and in another the gallant "Light-Horse Harry," who so ably
assisted him at Eutaw Springs--the brave and eloquent Lee. Upon the
first marble slab is engraven, "In memory of Catherine Miller (widow of
the late Major-General Nathaniel Greene, Commander-in-Chief of the
American Revolutionary Army in the Southern Department in 1783), who
died Sept. 2d, 1814, aged 59 years. She possessed great talents and
exalted virtues." Phineas Miller, Esq., a native of Connecticut and a
graduate of Yale College, who had been engaged by General Greene as
law-tutor to his son, managed the widow's estates after the general's
death, and later married her. His grave is here, though unmarked by any
st