head, but the old man remained staunch in his refusal.  Provoked by his fidelity, at length they brutally beat him with the butts of their pistols until his gray hairs were dabbled in gore, and went off to other plunder, telling their followers to take what they wanted from my residence.  But, bruised, bleeding and crippled though he was, Old John still defended his master’s property, and sitting on the front steps of the house kept the whole crowd at bay by the firmness and dignity of his attitude.  I heard of the affair first from a white man who lived in the neighborhood, and it was not until I asked him about it that he told me himself.  The next day he gave to my own people the furniture remaining in the house to keep until I came back, but positively refused to allow them to take of the crops that had been gathered any more than was required for their subsistence, and this he regularly shared out to them at stated intervals.  And when, after a long imprisonment and much enfeebled myself, I landed one evening at the wharf which leads up to the house, the first figure which met my sight was the old man faithfully guarding the barns.  His eyesight was too dim for him to see me, but as soon as he heard my voice he seized my hand with passionate fervor, pressing it repeatedly to his lips and bedewing it with tears.  Can you wonder if he has shared my fortunes ever since?  But not at Woodlawn.  The negroes generally were wild with the notion of freedom, and utterly ignorant of the practical meaning of the term.  To me they were always civil and affectionate, but I preferred that some other than myself should teach them its rugged lesson, and immediately leased the place for a term of years to one better fitted than I to derive profit from it under the new system.  The gentlemen and the negroes are the two classes upon whom the first results of the fearful revolution in society caused by the war fell with heaviest weight.  Both were totally unprepared for it, and both have so far suffered cruelly.  A year ago Old John died, faithful and cared for to the last.  A few months ago the lease I had executed expired, and I visited the estate again.  All the glamour of the past had disappeared.  The home of my fathers knew me no more, and I have sold it.  Cuffee, whom you remember as my body-servant, who followed me through the war, and bore me on his back from the battlefield upon which I was severely wounded, and who would have come with me here had circumstances permitted of my retaining his services,—­Cuffee has taken to politics, and now represents the county in the Legislature of the State; and the last figure that I remember seeing as I left the place was that of old Sary, the sick nurse, her long black hair streaming in the wind (you remember she was an Indian half-breed), her feet bare, her petticoat ragged and limp, standing in the lane which leads from the house—­her arms akimbo, a sort of miniature Meg Merrilies—­screaming out to me, ‘You left you own plantashun.’