South--the men who rode at night--were to the slave always a tragic
terror.

It seemed a thing for joke and ribald song.

After lunch, the negroes entered on the afternoon's fun or work. The
industrious ones plied their trades to earn money for luxuries. The boys
who loved to fish and hunt rabbits hurried to the river and the fields.
There was always a hound at their service for a rabbit hunt on Saturday
afternoons. Some were pitching horse shoes. Two groups began to play
marbles.

The marketing done for the house, the mistress of Arlington, with
medicine case in hand, started on her round of healing for body and
mind. Mary offered to go with her but the mother saw Stuart hovering
about and quietly answered:

"No. You can comfort poor Jeb. He looks disconsolate."

Into every cottage she moved, a quiet, ministering angel. Every hope and
fear of ailing young or old found in her an ear to hear, a heart to pity
and an arm to save.

If she found a case of serious illness, a doctor was called and a nurse
set to watch by the bedside. Every delicacy and luxury the big house
held was at the command of the sufferer and that without stint.

In all these clean flower-set cottages there was not a single crippled
servant maimed in the service of his master. No black man or woman was
allowed to do dangerous work. All dangerous tasks were done by hired