fierce tide of war that had rushed through the cities and along
the great highways of the country had comparatively speaking but
slightly disturbed the sluggish current of life in this region, remote
from railroads and navigable streams. To the north in Virginia, to the
west in Tennessee, and all along the seaboard the war had raged; but the
thunder of its cannon had not disturbed the echoes of Branson County,
where the loudest sounds heard were the crack of some hunter's rifle,
the baying of some deep-mouthed hound, or the yodel of some tuneful
negro on his way through the pine forest. To the east, Sherman's army
had passed on its march to the sea; but no straggling band of "bummers"
had penetrated the confines of Branson County. The war, it is true, had
robbed the county of the flower of its young manhood; but the burden of
taxation, the doubt and uncertainty of the conflict, and the sting of
ultimate defeat, had been borne by the people with an apathy that robbed
misfortune of half its sharpness.

The nearest approach to town life afforded by Branson County is found in
the little village of Troy, the county seat, a hamlet with a population
of four or five hundred.

Ten years make little difference in the appearance of these remote
Southern towns. If a railroad is built through one of them, it infuses
some enterprise; the social corpse is galvanized by the fresh blood of
civilization that pulses along the farthest ramifications of our great
system of commercial highways. At the period of which I write, no
railroad had come to Troy. If a traveler, accustomed to the bustling
life of cities, could have ridden through Troy on a summer day, he might
easily have fancied himself in a deserted village. Around him he would
have seen weather-beaten houses, innocent of paint, the shingled roofs
in many instances covered with a rich growth of moss. Here and there he
would have met a razor-backed hog lazily rooting his way along the
principal thoroughfare; and more than once he would probably have had to
disturb the slumbers of some yellow dog, dozing away the hours in the
ardent sunshine, and reluctantly yielding up his place in the middle of
the dusty road.

On Saturdays the village presented a somewhat livelier appearance, and
the shade trees around the court house square and along Front Street
served as hitching-posts for a goodly number of horses and mules and
stunted oxen, belonging to the farmer-folk who had come in to tr