United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
"No, my man, you can't go with us. We are marching much too rapidly for
you to keep up. Stay here where you are known. Make terms with your
master for wages or share in the crops. If it is necessary, the people
about here will probably soon again hear the proclamation from our
cannon. Mr. Baron, why don't you gain the goodwill of those people and
secure their co-operation? They will be worth more to you as freemen,
and they ARE free. I give you friendly advice. Accept what you can't
help. Adapt yourselves to the new order of things. Any other course
will be just as futile as to resolve solemnly that you will have
nothing to do with steam, but travel as they did in Abraham's time."
Miss Lou looked at her uncle curiously to see how he would take this
advice. His coldness of manner and silence told how utterly lost upon
him it was. The general looked at him a moment, and then said gravely,
"Mr. Baron, such men as you are the enemies of your section, not such
men as I. Good-morning, sir. Good-by, my child. Heaven bless and
protect you!" With a stately bow to Mrs. Whately he departed and was
soon on the ridge again with his men.
"I wonder if Abraham and the Patriarchs would have been any more ready
for the new order of things than uncle?" Miss Lou thought as she went
to find Scoville.
"He down at Aun' Jinkey's cabin. Chunk took he dinner dar," Zany
whispered.
"He des step ter de run ter wash he han's en face," said Aun' Jinkey a
little later.
Passing some screening shrubbery, the girl saw him standing on the spot
from which he had been carried insensible by her directions so brief a
time before. "Your dinner is ready," she called.
He came to her quickly and said, "I've been trying to realize all that
has happened since I fell at your feet yonder."
"Far more has happened to me than to you," she replied. "It seems years
since then; I've seen and learned so much."
"I wish to ask you something," he said earnestly.
"That scamp, Perkins, fired on me at close range. You stood just over
him and I heard what you said. How happened it that his bullet flew so
wide of the mark?"
She began laughing as she asked, "Have you never heard that there was
luck in throwing an old shoe? I hit Perkins over the eyes with one of
mine."
"Took it off and fired it while he was trying to shoot me?"
"Yes."
He seized both her hands and asked, "What will you take for that shoe?"
"What a Yankee you are to ask such a question! It wasn't a shoe; it was
a slipper." "Have you it on now?"
"Yes. What should you want of it?"
"I want to wear it next my heart. Which one was it? Let me see it."
"No; it's old. I haven't any other, and I shall wear it on my right
foot as long as it lasts."
"Please let me see it and take it in my hands just a moment. I may
never have a chance to ask another favor of you."
"Oh, yes, you will. You are coming to see us, and the general has asked
me to visit his daughter after the war is over. Do you think he'll
remember it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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