plantations themselves were
stripped; the little things they could take with them when they went,
such as eggs, honey, etc., were wanting, and to go too often without
anything to give might make them seem like beggars, and that they were
not. Their husbands and sons were in the army fighting for the South, as
well as those from the plantations, and they stood by this fact on the
same level.

The arrogant looks of the negroes were unpleasant, and in marked
contrast to the universal graciousness of their owners, but they were
slaves and they could afford to despise them. Only they must uphold
their independence. Thus no one outside knew what the women of the
district went through. When they wrote to their husbands or sons that
they were in straits, it meant that they were starving. Such a letter
meant all the more because they were used to hunger, but not to writing,
and a letter meant perhaps days of thought and enterprise and hours of
labor.

As the war went on the hardships everywhere grew heavier and heavier;
the letters from home came oftener and oftener. Many of the men got
furloughs when they were in winter quarters, and sometimes in summer,
too, from wounds, and went home to see their families. Little Darby
never went; he sent his mother his pay, and wrote to her, but he did not
even apply for a furlough, and he had never been touched except for a
couple of flesh wounds which were barely skin-deep. When he heard from
his mother she was always cheerful; and as he knew Vashti had never even
visited her, there was no other reason for his going home. It was in
the late part of the third campaign of the war that he began to think of
going.

When Cove Mills got a letter from his wife and told Little Darby how
"ailin'" and "puny" his mother was getting, Darby knew that the letter
was written by Vashti, and he felt that it meant a great deal. He
applied for a furlough, but was told that no furloughs would be
granted then--which then meant that work was expected. It came shortly
afterward, and Little Darby and the company were in it. Battle followed
battle. A good many men in the company were killed, but, as it happened,
not one of the men from the district was among them, until one day when
the company after a fierce charge found itself hugging the ground in
a wide field, on the far side of which the enemy--infantry and
artillery--was posted in force. Lying down they were pretty well
protected by the conformation of t