Some of the fields that stretched around were poor, and in places where the rains had washed off the soil, red “galls” showed through; but the tillage was careful and systematic, and around the house were rich hay-fields where the cattle stood knee-deep in clover. The brown worm fences ran in lateral lines, and the ditches were kept clean except for useful willows. [Illustration: “_Shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs._”] [Illustration: “_There the guns were kept._”] [Illustration: “_Bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books._”] The furniture was old-timey and plain,--mahogany and rosewood bedsteads and dressers black with age, and polished till they shone like mirrors, hung with draperies white as snow; straight-backed chairs generations old interspersed with common new ones; long sofas with claw feet; old shining tables with slender brass-tipped legs, straight or fluted, holding some fine old books, and in springtime a blue or flowered bowl or two with glorious roses; bookcases filled with brown-backed, much-read books. This was all. The servants’ houses, smoke-house, wash-house, and carpenter-shop were set around the “back yard,” with “mammy’s house” a little nicer than the others; and farther off, upon and beyond the quarters hill, “the quarters,”--whitewashed, substantial buildings, each for a family, with chicken-houses hard by, and with yards closed in by split palings, filled with fruit trees, which somehow bore cherries, peaches, and apples in a mysterious profusion even when the orchard failed. Beyond the yard were gardens. There were two,--the vegetable garden and the flower garden. The former was the test of the mistress’s power; for at the most critical times she took the best hands on the place to work it. The latter was the proof of her taste. It was a strange affair: pyrocanthus hedged it on the outside; honeysuckle ran riot over its palings, perfuming the air; yellow cowslips in well-regulated tufts edged some borders, while sweet peas, pinks, and violets spread out recklessly over others; jonquilles yellow as gold, and, once planted, blooming every spring as certainly as the trees budded or the birds nested, grew in thick bunches; and here and there were tall lilies, white as angels’ wings and stately as the maidens that walked among them; big snowball bushes blooming with snow, lilacs purple and white and sweet in the spring, and always with birds’ nests in them with the bluest of eggs; and in places rosebushes, and tall hollyhock stems filled with rich rosettes of every hue and shade, made a delicious tangle. In the autumn rich dahlias and pungent-odored chrysanthemums ended the sweet procession and closed the season. [Illustration: “_The flower of all others was the rose._”]