ola dressed hastily and rushed down-stairs. Jennie and the boys
appeared almost at the same moment.

"What is it?" Socola asked excitedly. "War has been declared? The slaves
have risen?"

Jennie laughed.

"No--no! Grandmamma smells a smell. She thinks something is burning
somewhere."

"Oh--"

The whole place, house, yard, grounds, outhouses, swarmed with bellowing
negroes. Those that were not bellowing were muttering in sleepy,
quarrelsome protest.

And they all carried candles to look for a fire in the dark!

There were at least seventy--two-thirds of them too old or too young to
be of any service, but they belonged to the house.

The old Colonel's voice could be heard a mile. In his nightgown he was
roaring from the balcony, giving his orders for the busy crowd hunting
for fire with their candles flickering in the shadows.

Old Mrs. Barton, serenely deaf, was of course oblivious of the sensation
she had created. The loss of her hearing had rendered doubly acute her
sense of smell. Candles had to be taken out of her room to be snuffed.
Lamps were extinguished only on the portico or on the lawn. Violets she
couldn't endure. A tea rose was never allowed in her room. Only one kind
of sweet rose would she tolerate at close range.

In the mildest voice she was suggesting places to be searched.

Far out at the negro quarters the candle brigade at length gathered--the
flickering lights closing in to a single point one by one.

The smell was found.

A family had been boiling soap--a slave-ridden plantation was a
miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could
be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot
the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there
and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.

Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild
commotion--the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy
sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire
in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous
picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on
old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal
flannel.

CHAPTER X

THE GAUGE OF BATTLE

Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a
suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day
Jefferson Davis was inaugurated Pre