A low consultation was held, and one of the officers left and soon returned with another who proved to be a physician. He aroused the boy, asked several questions, and examined his pulse and tongue.
“That will do,” said he, and turning to the others, he said:
“He is a very sick boy, and needs medical treatment at once. I will prescribe and go for the medicine, which I wish given according to directions.”
Having received a statement of the boy’s condition from a trusted source, we were evidently re-instated into the good opinion of Major Campbell and his friends. Telitha had retired from them to as great a distance as the boundaries of the room would permit, and every time she caught my eye she looked and acted what she could not express in words—utter aversion for the “Yank.”
We now resumed our inspection of the interior of the house. The contents of every drawer were on the floor, every article of value having been abstracted. Crockery scattered all over the room, suggested to the eye that it had been used to pelt the ghosts of the witches burned in Massachusetts a century or two ago. Outrages and indignities too revolting to mention met the eye at every turn. And the state of affairs in the parlor baffled description. Not an article had escaped the destroyer’s touch but the piano, and circumstances which followed proved that that was regarded as a trophy and only waited removal.
“Vandals! Vandals!” Major Campbell sorrowfully exclaimed, and all his friends echoed the opinion, and said:
“If the parties who did this work could be identified, we would hang them as high as Haman.”
But these parties were never identified. They were important adjuncts in the process of subjugation.
After wishing that the worst was over with us, these gentlemen, who had come in no friendly mood, bade us good night and took their leave. Thus the Lord of Hosts, in his infinite mercy, furnished a just tribunal to pass judgment upon my acts as a Southern woman, and that judgment, influenced by facts and surroundings, was just and the verdict humane.