But how cold and distant had begun to sound the word home. How time must have transformed the old place. And all the negroes were free. I scarcely could realize it. I wondered what they would do with their freedom, if they knew how to act. They could not support themselves by standing about and proclaiming themselves free. They must work and after all their liberty was to be tinged with slavery. Thus I mused as I moved with sore tread along the hard turn-pike, slowly entering the domain of my boyhood, growing heavier and sadder with the sight of each familiar object. I came to the old mill, gray and green, with roof fallen in, with cap-stones pulled down by the wanton hands that reach out to destroy when a war-storm has swept over the land. The creek sang to me, not as of yore, a sweet and poetic tune, but a sorrowful and hollow-sounding dirge. Onward I strode, limping now, for my shoes were worn through and my feet were bleeding. The day was closing. The shadow of the trumpet vine, clustered high on the top rail of the fence, fell dark athwart the white and ghastly pike. Another rise of ground and Potter's house was thrown into view, red in the setting sun. I had to halt to calm the tumultuous beating of my heart. I wondered if the news had reached her. Surely word must have been sent from Old Master's house. But it was my duty to stop and repeat his last words, to tell her that I had buried her letters with him. I dreaded the look she would give me, the tone of her voice. Now I could see that she had been passionately fond of him. I thought of the sentence I had passed upon her nature, the complaint that I could not hold her clear in my mental gaze, and I repented of this dark injustice. Onward again I limped, my eyes low upon the white pebbles; and I did not look up until abreast of the gate. Then I found myself among a number of carriages and buggies. A score of horses were tied to the fence. An old man stood by the road-side and I addressed a question to him. "What means all this?" He nodded his head toward the house and thus he answered me: "Miss Jane Potter has just married a Yankee general." I tried to run, when it seemed that I had grabbed myself up from falling, and I stumbled away down the pike. In a corner of the fence I dropped upon my knees and cried aloud. Merciful God, was the whole world false! Long I knelt there in agony, reviewing my pitiable life, with my master's image and his blood vivid before me. Merry laughter startled me to my feet. A carriage, followed by other vehicles and horses, passed briskly along; and fiercely I shook my fist at the carriage in front, and bitterly I wished for a gun, a cannon, that I might be avenged upon a black and traitorous heart.