"I'm so glad you're going our way. I'm sure my sister will be most happy to see you."
"Oh! You are the brother of Miss Woodley then?"
"One of them. There are two of us. I am the youngest of the lot. Henry, who is the oldest, don't live with us here. He has a plantation in Mississippi, below Vicksburg. That's where my sister has been. She spends her winters with him, and only comes to Tennessee for the summer months."
I felt secretly glad that the summer months had not yet quite passed away.
We rode on; from this time calling each other by name, and conversing as if we had been old acquaintances. More than ever did I long to become initiated into the economy of a cotton plantation.
CHAPTER III.
NAT BRADLEY.
I had been for some time expecting to see my guide strike into one of those side gates, sparsely appearing along the pike, and which I knew, by the pretentious piers of hewn post-oak, to be the entrances to some dwelling or plantation.
"How far is it to your father's place?" I asked, in a careless way, so as to conceal my impatience.