“I’m feared you’ll charge me _bode_!” She had expanded. “I ken git a little house somewheres, I reckon—or I ken go to th’ city and nuss—chillun.” “Mammy—you don’t understand—” The Doctor was never in such a dilemma. If his wife would only come in! What a fool he was, not to have known that his wife knew more about it than he did. “Won’t you accept the money as a gift from me?” he said at last, desperately. “Nor—I ain’ gwine _tetch_ it!” The gesture was even more final than the tone. With a sniff, she turned and walked out, leaving the Doctor feeling like a school-boy. He rose after a few minutes and went to his wife’s room to get her to make his peace. The door was shut, but he opened it. The scene within was one that remained with him through life. His wife was weeping, and the mammy and Blair were in each other’s arms. The only words he heard were from the mammy. “Ef jest my _ole marster_ could come back. He’d know I didn’ do it for no wages.” “Oh! mammy, _he_ knows it too!” The Doctor was never conscious of being so much alone in his life, and it took some time to make his peace. In the same way that the old planters and landowners set in to restore the old places, the younger men also went to work. Necessity is a good spur and pride is another. Stamper, with Delia Dove “for overseer,” as he said, was already beginning to make an impression on his little place. As he had “kept her from having an overseer,” he said, the best thing he could do was to “let her be one.” “Talk about th’ slaves bein’ free, Mr. Jack! they won’t all be free long’s Delia Dove’s got me on her place.” The little Sergeant’s chuckle showed how truly he enjoyed that servitude. “She owns me, but she treats me well,” he laughed. The Stamper place, amid its locusts and apple-trees, with its hipped roof and dormer-windows, small as it was, was as old as Red Rock—at least as the new mansion, with its imposing porticoes and extended wings, built around the big fireplace of the old house—and little Andy, though being somewhat taciturn he never said anything about it, was as proud of this fact as he was of being himself rather than Hiram Still. He had got an old army wagon from somewhere and was now beginning his farming operations in earnest. It had had “U. S.” on it, but though Andy insisted that the letters stood for “_US_,” not for the United States, Delia Dove had declined to ride in the vehicle as long as it had such characters stamped on it. As Mrs. Stamper was obdurate, Andy finally was forced to save her sensibilities, which he did by substituting “D” for “U.” This, he said, would stand either for “Delia Stamper,” or “D—d States.” Jacquelin Gray was almost the only one of the men who was not able to go to work. His wound showed a tendency to break out afresh.