ere could be no crop harvested
for a twelvemonth, and beggary looked them in the face. I have never
beheld anything more chivalrously gallant, than the sturdy old
quartermaster's attitude. He blended in tone and face the politeness of
a diplomat and the gentleness of a father. They asked him to return to
the house, with his _officers_, when he had loaded the wagons; for
dinner was being prepared, and they hoped that Virginians could be
hospitable, even to their enemies. As to the hay and fodder, none need
be left; for the Confederates had seized their horses some months
before, and driven off their cows when they retired from the
neighborhood.

I so admired the queer gables and great brick ovens of the house, that I
resolved to tie my horse, and rest under the crooked porch. The eldest
young lady had taken me to be a prisoner, and was greatly astonished
that the Quartermaster permitted me to go at large. She asked me to have
a chair in the parlor, but when I made my appearance there, the two
younger sisters fled precipitately. The old man was shaking his head
sadly by the fireplace. Some logs burned on the andirons with a red
flame. The furniture consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and
chairs,--ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a
sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was
bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black
mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving in the staunchest
of walnut-wood.

Directly the two younger girls--though the youngest must have been
twenty years of age--came back with averted eyes and the silliest of
giggles. They sat a little distance apart, and occasionally nodded or
signalled like school children.

"Wish you _would_ stop, Bell!" said one of these misses,--whose flaxen
hair was plastered across her eyebrows, and who was very tall and
slender.

"See if I don't tell on you," said the other,--a dark miss with roguish
eyes and fat, plump figure, and curls that shook ever so merrily about
her shoulders.

"Declar' I never said so, if he asks me; declar' I will."

"Tell on you,--you see! Won't he be jealous? How he will car' on!"

I made out that these young ladies were intent upon publishing their
obligations to certain sweethearts of theirs, who, as it afterward
seemed, were in the army at Manassas Junction. I said to the
curly-haired miss, that she was endangering the life of her enamored;
for it wou