In the mildest voice she was suggesting places to be searched.
Far out at the negro quarters the candle brigade at length gathered—the flickering lights closing in to a single point one by one.
The smell was found.
A family had been boiling soap—a slave-ridden plantation was a miniature world which must be practically self-supporting. There could be no economy of labor by its scientific division. Around the soap pot the negro woman had swept some woolen rags. They were smoldering there and the faint odor had been wafted to the great house.
Socola couldn't sleep. All night long he could hear that wild commotion—the old Colonel's voice roaring from the balcony and seventy sleepy, good-for-nothing negroes with lighted candles looking for a fire in the dark. When at last he was tired of laughing at the ridiculous picture, his foolish fancy took another turn and fixed itself again on old Bob and Aunt Rhinah in their rocking chairs, swathed in cochineal flannel.
CHAPTER X
THE GAUGE OF BATTLE
Socola found the little town of Montgomery, Alabama, breathing under a suppression of emotion that was little short of uncanny on the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated President.