worn
volcanically at her for the fifth time in the course of one forenoon,
"I'se jus' erbout wo'ed out! I done been knowin' Mawstuh Caspah ebber
sence I was Ol' Mistis's tiah-'ooman--dat's what she call me in de
plantashum days--an' I ain't nev' seen him so fractious ez he been sence
dat letter come tellin' him come get dat po' li'l gal-child o' Mawstuh
Louis's. Seems lak he jus' gwine r'ar round twel he hu't somebody!"

Scipio, the Major's body-servant, had grown gray in the Dabney service,
and he was well used to the master's storm periods.

"Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none erbout dat, Mis' Juliet. Mawstuh Majah
tekkin' hit mighty hawd 'cause Mawstuh Louis done daid. But bimeby you
gwine see him climm on his hawss an' ride up yondeh to whah de big
steamboats comes in an' fotch dat li'l gal-child home; an' den:
uck--uh-h! look out, niggahs! dar ain't gwine be nuttin' on de top side
dishyer yearth good ernough for li'l Missy. You watch what I done tol'
you erbout dat, now!"

Scipio's prophecy, or as much of it as related to the bringing of the
orphaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor, wrought itself out speedily, as a
matter of course, though there was a vow to be broken by the necessary
journey to the North. At the close of the war, Captain Louis, the
Major's only son, had become, like many another hot-hearted young
Confederate, a self-expatriated exile. On the eve of his departure for
France he had married the Virginia maiden who had nursed him alive after
Chancellorsville. Major Caspar had given the bride away,--the war had
spared no kinsman of hers to stand in this breach,--and when the
God-speeds were said, had himself turned back to the weed-grown fields
of Deer Trace Manor, embittered and hostile, swearing never to set foot
outside of his home acres again while the Union should stand.

For more than twenty years he kept this vow almost literally. A few of
the older negroes, a mere handful of the six score slaves of the old
patriarchal days, cast in their lot with their former master, and with
these the Major made shift thriftily, farming a little, stockraising a
little, and, unlike most of the war-broken plantation owners, clinging
tenaciously to every rood of land covered by the original Dabney
title-deeds.

In this cenobitic interval, if you wanted a Dabney colt or a Dabney cow,
you went, or sent, to Deer Trace Manor on your own initiative, and you,
or your deputy, never met the Major: your business was transacte