No wonder I was silent. Night had fallen, we had entered a dark forest, there was an unreconstructed penknife (somehow or other, I always forget my bowie-knife and Derringers now-a-days) recently sharpened in my pocket. Why did I not cut the throat of this little Oppressor and fatten the soil of my native land with the blood of the small ruthless Yankee Invader? It was just because at this moment we caught up with the ambulance. The two vehicles halted, a young girl and a little boy left the ambulance and took seats by the side of my driver, and the greeting of the brother and sister--the latter having just returned from a visit to her native granite hills--was actually as affectionate, beautiful and sweet as if they had been born in the middle of the Mother of States and of Statesmen. And as the ambulance drove on there came floating back to us ever and anon on the night wind a still sweeter voice. It came from a young lady--a young Yankee lady at that--and it sounded sweet to me--to me myself, my own dear, unadulterated, real Old Virginia self. Turning from the main road, we wound around among the rocky ravines in a fashion truly bewildering to a body with weak eyes, but my little Yankee driver seemed so much at home that I felt no shadow of fear. Arriving safely at the general's capacious mansion, I bade my Northern friends good-night, and sat down to a supper without fried chickens or coffee. In lieu of the latter we had cold tea, with a slice of lemon in each goblet. After a long talk on matters of no concern to the reader, during which the general related a number of capital war-anecdotes, I contrived, as is my wont, to turn the conversation upon agricultural topics, with the view of imparting to him a modicum of that consummate farming wisdom which appertains to every thoroughly conceited scribbler. "Fine country you have, general." "Yes: from Lugston to the Tennessee line, two hundred good miles, the country is as fine as the sun ever shone upon." "Appears to be thinly settled." "You may well say so. Between my house and the station there are eight or nine thousand acres, most of it excellent land, belonging to only five or six owners." "Indeed! What are such immense tracts good for now-a-days?" "Good for grass." "But they seem to pay little attention to grass." "True. It is a splendid cheese country, as I have proved, but our people are not up to that as yet." "They _will_ grow tobacco. I saw some fine timber sacrificed for the sake of new-ground tobacco." "And why not? A man gets tired of paying taxes for twenty or thirty years on timber which yields him nothing." I smiled an invisible smile, reverting in my thoughts to an assault I had made the week before upon my kinsman in Buckingham. "William," said I, "why will you Southside people continue to exhaust your land with tobacco?"