“Run and get your trunk, Johnny, and get aboard!”
“He’s a bushwhacker, boys. If he bats his eyes, I’m a-goin’ to dodge!”
“Where’s the rest of your regiment, Johnny?”
“If there was another one of ’em a-settin’ on the fence, on t’other side, I’d say we was surrounded!”
These and hundreds of other comments, exclamations, and questions, Joe was made the target of; and, if he stood the fire of them with unusual calmness, it was because this huge panorama seemed to him to be the outcome of some wild dream. That the Federal army should be plunging through that peaceful region, after all he had seen in the newspapers about Confederate victories, seemed to him to be an impossibility. The voices of the men, and their laughter, sounded vague and insubstantial. It was surely a dream that had stripped war of its glittering’ trappings and its flying banners. It was surely the distortion of a dream that tacked on to this procession of armed men droves of cows, horses, and mules, and wagon-loads of bateaux! Joe had read of pontoon bridges, but he had never heard of a pontoon train, nor did he know that bateaux were a part of the baggage of this invading army.
But it all passed after a while, and then Joe discovered that he had not been dreaming at all. He jumped from the fence and made his way home through the fields. Never before, since its settlement, had such peace and quiet reigned on the plantation. The horses and mules were gone, and many of the negro cabins were empty. Harbert was going about as busy as ever, and some of the older negroes were in their accustomed places, but the younger ones, especially those who, by reason of their fieldwork, had not been on familiar terms with their master and mistress, had followed the Federal army. Those that remained had been informed by the editor that they were free; and so it happened, in the twinkling of an eye, that the old things had passed away and all was new.
In a corner of the fence, not far from the road, Joe found an old negro woman shivering and moaning. Near her lay an old negro man, his shoulders covered with an old ragged shawl. “Who is that lying there?” asked Joe.
“It my ole man, suh.”
“What is the matter with him?”
“He dead, suh! But, bless God, he died free!” *