For good reason the plantation was very silent on this warm spring morning.  Where only a year before dozens of soft eyed Jerseys had ranged through the pastures and wood lots there was now no sound of tinkling bells—­one after another the fine, blooded stock had been requisitioned by a sad faced quartermaster of the Army of Northern Virginia.  And one by one the fat porkers who had muzzled greedily among the ears from the Cary bins and who ought to have gone into the smoke house had departed, squealing, to furnish bone and sinew with which to repel the invader.  Saddest of all, the chicken coops down by the deserted negro quarters were quite as empty as the once teeming cabins themselves.  Poverty, grim and relentless, had caught the Carys in its iron hand and behind Poverty stood its far more frightening shadow—­Starvation.

But in these gloomy thoughts she was not entirely alone.  All that troubled her and more, though perhaps in a different way, passed hourly through the old gray kinky head of Uncle Billy who happened at this very moment to be emerging stealthily from the woods below the house.  Slowly and deliberately he made his way toward the front till he reached a bench where he sat down under a tree to ruminate over the situation and inspect the feathered prize which he had lately acquired by certain, devious means known only to Uncle Billy.  Wiping his forehead with his ragged sleeve and holding the bird up by its tied feet he regarded it with the eye of an expert, and the fatigue of one who has been sorely put to it in order to accomplish his purpose.

“It ‘pears to me,” said Uncle Billy, “dat des’ when you needs ’em the mostest the chickens goes to roosting higher ‘n’ higher.  Rooster—­I wonder who you b’longs to.  Um-um!” he murmured as he thoughtfully sounded the rooster’s well developed chest through the feathers.  “From de feelin’ of you, my son, I ‘spec’ you was raise’ by one er de ol’es’ fam’lies what is!”

But Uncle Billy knew the fortunes of the Cary family far too well to mourn over the probable toughness of his booty, and as he rose up from the seat and meandered toward the kitchen, his old, wrinkled face broke into a broad smile of satisfaction over the surprise he had in store.  “Well—­after I done parbile you, I reckon Miss Hallie be mighty glad to see you.  Yas, seh!”

But as Uncle Billy walked slowly along beside the hedge which shielded the house on one side he heard a sound which made him halt.  A young negro, coming from the rear, had dodged behind the hedge and was trying to keep out of his sight.

“Hi, dar!  You, Jeems Henry!” shouted Uncle Billy, instantly suspicious of such maneuvers.  “Come heh!  Hear me!  Come heh!”

At this sudden command a young mulatto, hesitating, came through a break in the hedge and stood looking at him, sullen and silent.  In his hands he carried a small bundle done up in a colored handkerchief and on this guilty piece of baggage Uncle Billy’s eye immediately fastened with an angry frown.