“Take it away,” yelled Tom, addressing the girl, who just then brought his breakfast in from the kitchen. “I don’t want anything to eat. I never want anything more as long as I live. How many thousand dollars was that cotton worth?”
“You’ll fret yourself sick if you give way to your feelings like this,” protested his mother. “We are not sure that anyone has troubled our cotton; we only fear it.”
“It would be on a par with the luck that has attended me all through this miserable war if every pound of it was gone up in smoke,” said Tom in a discouraged voice. “It’s some consolation to know that we are all poor together, for of course the men who knew where to find our cotton knew where to find Gray’s and Walker’s also.”
With these words Tom snatched his hat from the rack in the hall, and went down the steps and out to the gate to watch for his father’s return. The latter was a long time coming, and his face wore so dejected a look when he rode up and passed into the yard, that Tom could not find it in his heart to speak to him. He simply turned about and went into the house to wait, with as much fortitude as he could command, for his father to come in and tell the terrible news that was so plainly written on his face. His wife, who met him at the door, did not say a word until he had seated himself in the chair he usually occupied by the front window, and then she whispered the question:
“Is it all gone, George?”
“Every bale,” replied Mr. Randolph with a groan. “In the first place, nearly three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of niggers ran away and left us with barely a handful to do our work for us, and now the cotton I was depending on to start me afresh when the war ended has run away too; or gone up in the elements, which amounts to the same thing.”
“Of course Mr. Gray’s cotton——” stammered Tom.
“Wasn’t touched,” said Mr. Randolph, finishing the sentence for him. “You may believe it or not, but it is a fact that our cotton alone was destroyed. Walker and I found Mr. Gray and Rodney and Griffin and a dozen or so others in the swamp when we got there, and they had been trying to drag some of my bales out of reach of the flames; but they didn’t go there until morning, and of course were too late to be of any use.”
“The cowards!” exclaimed Tom bitterly. “If they saw the fire when it was burning, why didn’t they go at once?”
“Would you have done it?” replied his father. “They thought the fire had been set by soldiers and were afraid to go out in the dark; but if the soldiers had had a hand in it they would have burned other cotton. It was the work of someone who has a spite against us, and he has made beggars of us. I haven’t a dollar of good money, or a thing that can be turned into money; and even if I had, you and your Home Guards have made yourselves so obnoxious to the Baton Rouge people that I wouldn’t dare go there to trade. Oh, yes; we’re fit candidates for the poorhouse if there was one in the county.”