"I don't know, child. It is an experiment. It may be a failure, and it may be a pecuniary success. We shall certainly be obliged to economize until our autumn crops are gathered. But I am willing to do that, if I meet with no other reward than my own consciousness that I enter upon the task for the sake of a long oppressed race. I believe that by means of kindness and justice I can give them such ideas of industry and other social virtues as they could not obtain, and have not obtained, from centuries of robbery and cruelty." Lillie was lost in meditation, not concerning the good of the blacks, but concerning the probable visits of Colonel Carter at Taylorsville. Affectionately selfish woman as she was, she would not have given up the alarming joy of one of those anticipated interviews for the chance of civilizing a capering wilderness of negroes. Taylorsville, a flourishing village before the war, is situated on the Mississippi just where it is tapped by Bayou Rouge, which is one of the dozen channels through which the Father of Waters finds the Gulf of Mexico. It is on the western bank of the river, and for the most part on the southern bank of the bayou; and is protected from both by that continuous system of levees which alone saves southern Louisiana from yearly inundations. At the time of which I speak, a large portion of the town consisted of charred and smoke-blackened ruins. Its citizens had been mad enough to fire on our fleet, and Farragut had swept it with his iron besoms of destruction. On the same bank of the Mississippi, but on the northern bank of the bayou, at the apex of the angle formed by the diverging currents, is Fort Winthrop, a small star-shaped earth-work, faced in part with bricks, surrounded by a ditch except on the river side, and provided with neither casemate nor bombproof. Ordered by Butler and designed by Weitzel, it had been thrown up shortly after the little victory of Georgia Landing. It was to be within reach of this fort in case of an attack from raiding rebels, that Ravenel had selected a plantation for his philanthropic experiment in the neighborhood of Taylorsville. Haste was necessary to success, for the planting season was slipping away. Within a week or so after the marriage he had bought a stock of tools and provisions, obtained a ragged corps of negroes from the Superintendent of Colored Labor, shipped every thing on board a Government transport, and was on the spot where he proposed to initiate the re-organization of southern industry.