The ——th Virginia passed a cross-roads, and a little later came to something that aroused comment among the men. It was an empty, old-fashioned carriage, standing without horses, half on the road, half over the edge. “Looks,” said the men, “like the ark on Ararat!”—“Forlorn, ain’t it?”—“Where’s the horses and the people who were in it?”—“Reckon those Yanks before us took the horses. As for the people—I’d rather be a humming-bird in winter than the people in this State!”
Edward Cary rode across and checking his horse, leaned from the saddle and looked into the carriage—why, he hardly knew, unless it was that once in Georgia they had found a carriage stranded like this, and in it a child asleep. There was in this one nothing living. ... Just as he straightened himself he caught a glint of something small and golden lying in a corner. He dismounted, drew the swinging door further open and picked it up. It was a locket, and he had had it in his hands before.
He remembered passing, a little way back, a negro cabin. After a word to the commanding officer he galloped back to this place. Yes, they could tell him, and did. “She took this road?” “Yaas, sah. Long erbout midday. We done tol’ her erbout de creek en de mill en de right-han’ road—”
“Has any one else gone by this road? Any soldiers?”
“Yaas, sah. Right smart lot ob soldiers. Dey ax where dat road go, en I say hit go to de mill. Den dey say dey gwine burn de mill, en dey goes dat way. I reckon hits been mo’n three hours ergo, sah.”
It was dusk when Edward Cary and twenty cavalrymen turned into this road, and it had been night for some time when they came to the reddened place where had stood the mill. It was all down now, though the flames were yet playing through the mass of fallen timbers. The mill-wheel was a wreck, the miller’s house behind was burned. There were no soldiers here: they had destroyed and were gone. But out from some hiding-place came an old woman who seemed distraught. She stood in the flickering glow and said, “Yankees! Yankees!” and “They took an axe and killed the mill-wheel!”
Edward spoke to her, soothed her, and at last she drew her wits together, talked to him, and answered his questions. “Yes, a woman had been there and had left a little before sunset. Yes, dressed so and so—a beautiful woman. Yes, she had gone by that road, walking away alone. She said good-bye and then she had seen and heard nothing more of her. Then, in a little, little time, came the Yankees. Some of them were drunk, and she had run out of the house and hid within a brush heap. ... And now the mill-wheel would never turn again.”
“Which road did they take when they left—the Winnsboro’ road or that one running south?”
She was not sure. She thought the one running south—but maybe some went one way, some another. She did not know how many there were of them. They were on foot and horseback, too. Her eyes strayed to where the wheel had been, and she fell again to plucking at her apron.
Cary and his men took the right-hand road. It lay quiet as death beneath the winter stars. They travelled it slowly, looking from side to side, but if there were signs that an enemy had been that way, in the darkness they could not read them. Neither did they see any sign of a solitary traveller. All was quiet, with only the sighing of the wind. At last, nearing Winnsboro’, they came to their own picket-line. Camped by the road was a cavalry post. Edward spoke with the men here. “No. A quiet night—nothing seen and nothing heard out of the way. No one had passed—no, no woman.”