the next town had ordered the women to knit so many pairs of socks.

"Just let him try to enforce it and they will cowhide him. He'll get
none from me. I'll take care of my friends without an order from him."

"Well," said Mr. W., "if the South is defeated and the slaves set free,
the Southern people will all become atheists; for the Bible justifies
slavery and says it shall be perpetual."

"You mean, if the Lord does not agree with you, you'll repudiate him."

"Well, we'll feel it's no use to believe in anything."

At night the large sitting-room makes a striking picture. Mr. W., spare,
erect, gray-headed, patriarchal, sits in his big chair by the odorous
fire of pine logs and knots roaring up the vast fireplace. His driver
brings to him the report of the day's picking and a basket of snowy
cotton for the spinning. The hunter brings in the game. I sit on the
other side to read. The great spinning-wheels stand at the other end of
the room, and Mrs. W. and her black satellites, the elderly women with
their heads in bright bandanas, are hard at work. Slender and
auburn-haired, she steps back and forth out of shadow into shine
following the thread with graceful movements. Some card the cotton, some
reel it into hanks. Over all the firelight glances, now touching the
golden curls of little John toddling about, now the brown heads of the
girls stooping over their books, now the shadowy figure of little Jule,
the girl whose duty it is to supply the fire with rich pine to keep up
the vivid light. If they would only let the child sit down! But that is
not allowed, and she gets sleepy and stumbles and knocks her head
against the wall and then straightens up again. When that happens often