The place was sorely neglected since the reduction of the service in the old house. Cobwebs had congregated about ceiling and windows; the dust was thick on rows of old trunks, which annotated the journeyings of the family since the hair-covered, brass-studded style was the latest fashion to the sole leather receptacle that bore the initials of Judge Roscoe's dead wife, and the gigantic "Saratoga" that had served in Mrs. Gwynn's famous wedding journey. There were many specimens of broken chairs, and some glimmering branching girandoles, five feet high, that had illumined the house at one of the great weddings of long ago. A large cedar chest, proof against moths, preserved the ancient shawls and gowns of beauties of by-gone times, who little thought this ephemeral toggery would survive them. Certain antiquated pieces of furniture, hardly meet for the more modern assortment below,--chests of drawers surmounted by quaint little cabinets with looking-glasses, a lumbering wardrobe that seemed built for high water and stood on four long stilt-like legs, a pair of old mantel mirrors, wide and low, with tarnished gilded frames, dividing the reflecting surface into three equal sections, a great barometer that surlily threatened stormy weather, clumsy bureaus, bedsteads, each with four tall "cluster posts" surmounted by testers of red, quilled cloth drawn to a brass star in the centre, fire-dogs and fenders of dull brass--all were grouped here and there. One of these bedsteads had been occupied on some occasion when the house had been overcrowded, for the cords that sufficed in lieu of the more modern slats now supported a huge feather-bed. Judge Roscoe threw on it a carriage rug that had been hung to air on a cord which was stretched across one corner of the room. He almost fainted at a sudden, frightened clutch upon his arm, and, turning, saw his son in the agonies of panic, his teeth chattering, his eyes starting out of his head, his hand pointing tremulously toward the bed, as if bereft of his senses, demanding to be informed what that object might be. It was the time-honored joke of the young Southern soldiers that they had not seen or slept in a bedstead for so long that the mere sight of so unaccustomed a thing threw them into convulsions of fear. His father forgave the genuine tremors the joke had occasioned him for the joker's sake, and as Julius, flinging off his cap, coat, and boots, stretched out at his long length luxuriously, he stood by the pillow and admonished him of the plan of the campaign.