In the meantime, Anna had been with us for a few weeks, but greatly changed from the Anna of former times. Listlessly she moved from room to room—never smiling, never weeping, and seldom speaking unless she were first addressed. To her, everything was dark, deep night, and such a gloom did her presence cast over us all, that though we would gladly have kept her with us, we still felt relieved when she left us for a home in Boston, where little Jamie soon became the idol of his grandmother, whose subdued cheerfulness had ere long a visible effect upon Anna. Cousin Will, too, had visited us, and after spending a short time had sailed with brother John for California, promising himself a joyous future, when he should return with money sufficient to purchase the old homestead, which he said should be mother’s as long as she lived. It was a cold, dark, snowy morning in the latter part of April, when I at last started on my journey. The surface of the ground was frozen hard, the trees were leafless and bare, while but few green things gave token that spring was with us. It is not strange, then, that I almost fancied myself in another world, when after a prosperous sea voyage I one morning went on shore at Charleston, and first breathed the soft, balmy air of the South. Dense and green was the foliage of the trees, while thousands of roses and flowering shrubs filled the air with a perfume almost sickening to the senses. From Charleston to Augusta was a wearisome ride, for the cars were crowded and dirty, and there was to me nothing remarkably pleasing in the long stretches of cypress swamps and pine barrens through which we passed. It was late in the evening when we reached the town of C——, from whence I was to proceed to W——, by stage. It was a most beautiful night; and for hours I watched the soft moonlight as it glimmered among the trees which lined either side of the narrow road, and whose branches often swept against the windows of our lumbering vehicle. It was long after sunrise when we arrived at W——, but so thickly wooded is the country around, that I obtained not a single glimpse of the town until I suddenly found myself “thar,” as the driver said, dismounting and opening the door of our prison-house. The hotel into which I was ushered, would, perhaps, compare favorably with our country taverns at the North; but at each step I took, I felt a more and more painful consciousness that _home_, my home, was far away.