t from shore. But the lady's calm desire for obedience prevailed,
and presently, out of the knot of idlers that gathered quickly, one,
more chivalrous than the rest, helped the strange adventurers down
into the boat. It was the fashion to laugh and joke, in Beaufort, when
anything unusual was happening before the eyes of the younger part of
the colored population; but as the ferryman pushed off from shore,
even the crab-fishers kept awe-struck silence, and there were
speechless, open mouths and much questioning of eyes that showed their
whites in vain. Somehow or other, before the boat was out of hail,
long before it had passed the first bank of raccoon oysters, the tide
being at the ebb, it was known by fifty people that for the first time
in more than twenty years the mistress of the old Sydenham plantation
on St. Helena's Island had taken it into her poor daft head to go to
look after her estates, her crops, and her people. Everybody knew that
her estates had been confiscated during the war; that her people owned
it themselves now, in three and five and even twenty acre lots; that
her crops of rice and Sea Island cotton were theirs, planted and hoed
and harvested on their own account. All these years she had forgotten
Sydenham, and the live-oak avenue, and the outlook across the water to
the Hunting Islands, where the deer ran wild; she had forgotten the
war; she had forgotten her children and her husband, except that they
had gone away,--the graves to which she carried Easter flowers were
her mother's and her father's graves,--and her life was spent in a
strange dream.

Old Peter sat facing her in the boat; the ferryman pulled lustily at
his oars, and they moved quickly along in the ebbing tide. The
ferryman longed to get his freight safely across; he was in a fret of
discomfort whenever he looked at the clear-cut, eager face before him
in the stern. How still and straight the old mistress sat! Where was
she going? He was awed by her presence, and took refuge, as he rowed,
in needless talk about the coming of the sandflies and the great
drum-fish to Beaufort waters. But Peter had clasped his hands together
and bowed his old back, as if he did not dare to look anywhere but at
the bottom of the boat. Peter was still groaning softly; the old lady
was looking back over the water to the row of fine houses, the once
luxurious summer homes of Rhetts and Barnwells, of many a famous
household now scattered and impoverished.