CHAPTER IV


Of all the memories of war, after the dear dead are buried, there is one
that serves to bring the struggle back in all the intensity of its
horrors--to stand both as a monument to those who bled and suffered and
as a lonely sentinel mourning for the peace and plenty of the past--a
blackened chimney.

Of all the houses, cabins, barns and cribs which had made up the home of
the Carys a few short months ago nothing remained to-day but ashes and
black ruin. Only one building had been left unburned and this, before
the war, had been the cabin of an overseer. It had but two rooms, and a
shallow attic, which was gained by means of an iron ladder reaching to a
closely fitting scuttle in the ceiling. The larger room was furnished
meagerly with a rough deal table, several common chairs, and a
double-doored cupboard against the wall. In the deep, wide fire-place
glowed a heap of raked-up embers, on which, suspended from an iron
crane, a kettle simmered, sadly, as if in grief for her long-lost
brother pots and pans. The plaster on the walls had broken away in
patches, especially above the door, where the sunlight streamed through
the gaping wound from a cannon shot. The door and window shutters were
of heavy oak, swinging inward and fastening with bars; yet now they were
open, and through them could be seen a dreary stretch of river bottom,
withering beneath the rays of a July sun.