st visit there, and for a moment they did not recognize
her.

"Don't you know me, aunts?"

"Why, goodness me!" the eldest exclaimed, "if it isn't our little Lucy
grown into womanhood! My dear child, where have you sprung from?" And
the two ladies warmly embraced their niece, who, as soon as they
released her from their arms, burst into a fit of crying, and it was
some time before she could answer the questions showered upon her.

"It is nothing, aunts," she said at last, wiping her eyes; "but I am so
glad to be with you again, and I have gone through so much, and I am so
happy, and it's so nice being with you again! Here is Chloe waiting to
speak to you, aunts. She has come with me all the way."

The old negress, who had been waiting in the passage, was now called in.

"Why, Chloe, you look no older than when you went away from here six
years ago," Miss Kingston said. "But how did you get through the lines?
We have been terribly anxious about you. Your brother was here only a
fortnight ago, and he and your father were in a great way about you, and
reproached themselves bitterly that they did not send you to us before
the troubles began, which certainly would have been a wiser step, as I
told them. Of course your brother said that, when they left you to join
the army, they had no idea that matters were going so far, or that the
Yankees would drive us out of Tennessee, or they would never have
dreamed of leaving you alone. However, here you are, so now tell me all
about it."

Lucy told the story of the various visits of the Federal bushwhackers to
the house, and how she had narrowly escaped death for refusing to betray
the Confederate officer who had come to the house for food. Her recital
was frequently interrupted by exclamations of indignation and pity from
her aunts.

"Well, aunts, after that," she went on, "you see it was impossible for
me to stop there any longer. No doubt they came back again a few hours
afterward and burned the house, and had I been found there, I should
have been sure to be burned in it, so Chloe agreed with me that there
was nothing to do but to try and get through the lines and come to you."

"Quite right, my dear. It was clearly the best thing for you to come to
us--indeed, the only thing. But how in the world did you two manage to
travel alone all that distance and get through the Federal lines?"

"You see, we were not alone, aunts," Lucy said; "the Confederate officer
and his serva