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A SPARTAN MOTHER
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she carefully picked her way back over the hill toward the house.
She was met by Cephas before she had gone half way.
"Duh house hez done cotched afire!" cried the darky in tears, "and dere's t'ings bustin' ebery minit till dey's been t'ree ob us po' nigguhs killed daid! What am we a-goin' tuh do, missus?"
The woman pressed her hand for a moment to her throat, as tho she could not breathe.
"Cephas," she said, turning and hurrying along with him, "the ruins of our home will mark a great victory for the South. I am trying to think of that alone. Hurry every living soul into the smoke-house in the hollow. Then try to save your masters' pictures, all five of them, and our flag that is thrown over them. Also bring me the saber and a brace of pistols hanging there. ' '
Twenty minutes later Elizabeth Marye joined the huddled ,group of darkies in the smoke-house. She had just seen the grand old mansion that had been the home of her father's fathers, and the scene of all her girlhood joys, burned to the ground. Misfortune had dazed her; her mind was steadily weakening, her heart was slowly breaking. Husband and sons dead, her home burned, the cotton fields trodden, the stock pillaged, three slaves left of a score — she gave a little moan and sank disconsolately to a place Cephas had made for her on some cord-wood. Suddenly she rose, her lips parted, a ray lighting her dull eyes. In her catalog of misfortunes something had been missing; her groping mind had found it —Robert !
She hurried to the smoke-house window and peered out. A new disappointment met her eyes — the Unionists, clambering, amid terrible difficulties, to the brow of the topmost hill behind the ruins of the mansion. There was still a splendid opportunity for attack and a possible overwhelming defeat of the enemy if it could be done now, before they re