“No, we were not rich, but we had enough. Your father owned a mile square of land that was all paid for--he’s got that yet, but it don’t seem to do him any good, for the clearings have all grown up to briers--and we had a good house and plenty to eat and wear. He was a hard-working, saving man then, and so different from what he is now, that I sometimes think that somebody else has come to me from the southern army, and is passing himself off for Godfrey. We were happy in those days,” said Mrs. Evans, gazing earnestly into the little pile of coals on the hearth, as if the scenes she so well remembered were clearly pictured there. “I can remember when our cotton gin was kept running night and day; and I have seen eight four-horse teams going up the road toward the landing loaded with your father’s cotton. You can’t remember anything about it, for you were too young at the time.” “No,” said David, “but I can remember when we lived in that brush shantee that had a fire burning in front of it night and day; and I can remember of seeing you cry, and father walking up and down and swinging his arms as if he were crazy.” “That was just after we were burned out. You were four years old then. Until that time we never thought we should feel much of the war. Although we were only eight miles from the river, we used to feel perfectly safe, so far as the Federals were concerned. We used to see Redburn’s guerillas about once a week, but they belonged to our own side, and at first we did not stand in any fear of them, although we soon learned to dread them more than we did the Yankees. We never were afraid that they would hurt us, but they stole everything they could lay their hands on, and finally got so bad that General Imboden sent them word that if they didn’t do better he would come in with a regiment and wipe them off the face of the earth. We never thought that the Federals would get in here, and you don’t know how frightened we were when we found that in a few days their gunboats would be at our very doors. One day in February--that was in ’63--the Union soldiers came down from Helena and cut the levee. The water was high in the river, and it ran down through the pass and into Diamond lake here, and overflowed the bottoms until we thought it would drown us all. Then the gunboats came--two big iron-clads, a lot of tin-clads, and six thousand soldiers. They stopped here long enough to burn every dwelling-house and cotton-gin in the country for miles around, and then went on down the pass. Your father was at home then on a furlough, and I tell you they came pretty near catching him!” “How was it?” asked David, who never grew weary of listening to the story, although he had heard it probably a score of times. CHAPTER III. DAN’S STRATEGY.