CHAPTER I.

A glance at the past.

“Don’t worry about it, mother.  It is nothing we can help.”

“It seems to me that I might have helped it.  If I had gone to General Gordon when your father first spoke about that barrel with the eighty thousand dollars in it, and told him the whole story, things might have turned out differently.  But in spite of all he said, I did not suppose that he was in earnest.”

“Neither did I. That any man in his sober senses should think of such a thing!  Why, mother, if there had been so much money buried in that potato-patch, the General would have known it, and don’t you suppose he would have found it if he’d had to plough the field up ten feet deep?  Of course he would.”

“But just think of the disgrace that has been brought upon us.”

“Father is the only one who has done anything to be ashamed of, and he made matters worse by running away.  If he would come home and attend to his business, no one would say a word to him.  The General told me so this morning.”

“I am afraid you couldn’t make your father believe it.”

“Perhaps not, but if I knew where to find him I should try.”

It was David Evans who spoke last.  He and his mother were talking over the strange incidents that had happened in the settlement during the last few days, and which we have attempted to describe in the preceding volume of this series.  The events were brought about by a very foolish notion which Godfrey Evans, David’s father, suddenly got into his head.

During our late war it was the custom of the people living in the South to conceal their valuables when they heard of the approach of the Union army.  They were also careful to take the same precautions to save their property when it became known that the rebel guerillas were near at hand; for these worthies were oftentimes but little better than organized bands of robbers, and the people stood as much in fear of them as they did of the Federals.  These valuables, consisting for the most part of money, jewelry and silverware, were sometimes hidden in cellars, in hollow logs in the woods and in barns; but more frequently they were buried in the ground.  The work of hiding them was sometimes performed by the planters themselves, if they happened to be at home, but it was generally intrusted to old and faithful servants in whom their owners had every confidence.  It not unfrequently happened that these old and faithful servants proved themselves utterly unworthy of the trust reposed in them.  Sometimes they told the raiding soldiers where the property was concealed, and at others they ran away without telling even their masters where the valuables were hidden.  General Gordon’s old servant, Jordan, was one of this stamp.  He went off with the Union forces, who raided that part of Mississippi, and before he went he told a rebel soldier, Godfrey Evans, who happened to be at home on a furlough, and who was skulking in the woods to avoid capture, that he had just buried a barrel containing eighty thousand dollars in gold and silver in his master’s potato-patch, and that none of the family knew where it was.