"The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,"
contains a great truth, the world over.
A Levee in a Barn.
Our self-sacrificing friends belonged to a multitudinous family, extending through a settlement many miles in length. They all seemed to be nephews, cousins, or brothers; and the white-haired patriarch—at seventy, erect and agile as a boy,—in whose barn we remained to-day, was father, grandfather, or uncle, to the whole tribe. His loyalty was very stanch and intense.
"The Home Guards," said he, "are usually pretty civil. Occasionally they shoot at some of the boys who are hiding; but pretty soon afterward, one of them is found in the woods some morning with a hole in his head! I suppose there are a thousand young men lying out in this county. I have always urged them to fight the Guards, and have helped to supply them with ammunition. Two or three times, regiments from Lee's army have been sent here to hunt conscripts and deserters, and then the boys have to run. I have a son among them; but they never wounded him yet. I asked him the other day: 'Won't you kill some of them before you are ever captured?' 'Well, father,' says he, 'I'll be found a tryin'!' I reckon he will, too; for he has never gone without his rifle these two years, and he can bring down a squirrel every time, from the top of yon oak you see on the hill."
The barn was beside a public road, and very near the house of a woman whose Rebel sympathies were strong. There was danger that any one entering it might be seen by her or her children, who were running about the yard.
But we held quite a levée to-day. I think we had fifty visitors. We would hear the opening door and stealthy footsteps upon the barn-floor; then a soft voice would ask:
"Friends, are you there?"
We would rise from our bed of hay, and come forward to the front of the loft, to find some member of this great family of friends, who had brought his wife and children to see the Yankees. We would converse with them for a few minutes; they would invariably ask if there was nothing whatever they could do for us, invite us to visit their house by night, and express the warmest wishes for our success. They did this with such perfect spontaneity, with such overflowing hearts, that it touched us very nearly. Had we been their own sons or brothers, they could not have treated us more tenderly. This Christmas may have witnessed more brilliant gatherings than ours; but none, I am sure, warmed by a more self-sacrificing friendship.
Visited by an Old Friend.