We had slept, Johnny Garrett and I, by the side of a fence the night before, and without breakfast we had been riding all day. Late in the afternoon we made up our minds to go for supper and lodging to a great country house which I had frequently visited as a guest in the days of its abundance. As we rode through the plantation, decay manifested itself on every hand. There was a small, straggling crop in process of growth, but sadly ill attended. There were no animals in sight except five sheep that we saw grazing on a hillside. As we turned the corner of the woodland the mansion came into view. Only its walls were left standing. Fire had destroyed the rest. At the gate we met an old negro serving-man, whom I had known in the palmy days as Uncle Isham. When I had seen him last he was in livery. As I saw him _now_ he was in rags. Some eager, hurried inquiries as to the family brought out the fact that the mistress of the mansion with her two grown daughters was living in one of the negro quarters in rear of the burned house, and that he, alone, remained as a servant on the plantation. “Dey took all de res’ off No’th, an’ dey tried to take Isham, too. But Isham he slip’ de bridle one night, an’ he came back heah to look after ole missus an’ de girls. So heah I is, an’ heah Ise gwine to stay.” We did not remain to hear Isham’s account of his adventures, but hurried on to find out the condition of things with the family. There were but two rooms--one below, and the other above stairs--in the hut in which they were living. Yet the proud woman who was thus reduced showed no shame of her poverty, but gloried in it rather, as the old soldier glories in the scars received in his country’s service. She welcomed us with as warm a show of hospitality as she had ever made in the old days of lavish entertainment. After our first inquiries concerning their welfare, she said to us laughingly: “I wouldn’t keep you to-night, but would send you on to a better place, if I knew any better in the neighborhood. As it is, you’ll have to sleep under the trees for lack of room; but you boys are rather used to that. As for supper, I can give you some corn-bread and some sorghum molasses. The bread won’t be very good, because our supply of salt has run out, and of course as the cows have all been killed I can’t give you butter. But there’s enough bread and sorghum, anyhow.” “How long since you had meat?” I asked. “About three weeks,” she replied. “That is to say, since the last big raiding party came by.” “Have you no pigs left?” “No, we haven’t a living animal of any kind.” “Whose sheep are those I saw as I rode up?” “They belong to a neighbor,” she answered. “They’re what’s left of a large flock. When the raiders were here those five sheep ran into the bushes and escaped. But even if they were ours, you know, we couldn’t kill one.”