vas a pad promise, and a pad promise is petter
proken as kept. But if I preak it, they vill preak my head. Vot shall I
do? Now let me see!" said Carl.

And he remained plunged in thought.

XXXIV.

_CAPTAIN LYSANDER'S JOKE._

Since the time when she lost her best feather-bed and her boarder, the
worthy widow Sprowl had suffered serious pecuniary embarrassment. She
missed sadly the regular four dollars a week, and the irregular
gratuities, she had received from Penn. So much secession had cost her,
without yielding as yet any of its promised benefits. The Yankees had
not stepped up with the alacrity expected of them, and thrust their
servile necks into the yoke of their natural masters. The slave trade
was not reopened. Niggers were not yet so cheap that every poor widow
could, at a trifling expense, provide herself with several, and grow
rich on their labor. In the pride of seeing her son made what she called
a "capting," and in the hope of enjoying some of the golden fruits of
his valor, she had given him her last penny, and received up to the
present time not a penny from him in return. In short, Lysander was
ungrateful, and the widow was a disappointed woman.

So it happened that the sugar-bowl and tea-canister were often empty,
and the poor widow had no legitimate means of replenishing them. In this
extremity she resorted to borrowing. She borrowed of everybody, and
never repaid. She borrowed even of the hated Unionists in the
neighborhood, and confessed with bitterness to her son that she found
them more ready to lend to her than the families of secessionists.

Again, on the morning of the events related in the last chapter, she
found herself in want of many things--tea, sugar, meal, beans, potatoes,
snuff, and tobacco; for this excellent woman snuffed, "dipped," and
smoked.

"Where shall I go and borry to-day?" said she, counting her patrons, and
the number of times she had been to borrow of each, on her fingers.
"Thar's Mis' Stackridge. I hain't been to her but oncet. I'll go agin,
and carry the big basket."

With her basket on her arm, and an ancient brown bonnet (which had been
black at the time of the demise of the late lamented Sprowl,) on her
head, and a multitude of excuses on her tongue, she set out, and walked
to the farmer's house. This had one of those great, shed-like openings
through it, so common in Tennessee. A door on the left, as you entered
this covered space, led to the kitchen