This Godfrey Evans had been well off in the world at one time.  He had property to the amount of fifteen thousand dollars; but, like many others, he lost it all during the war, and returned home after the surrender of General Lee to find himself a poor man.  His comfortable house had been burned over the heads of his wife and children, who were now living in a rude hut which some kind-hearted neighbors had hastily erected; his negroes, who had made his money for him, were all gone; his cattle had been slaughtered by both rebel and Union troops, and his mules and horses carried off; his fine drove of hogs, which ran loose in the woods, and upon which he relied to furnish his year’s supply of bacon, had wandered away and become wild; and Godfrey had nothing but his rifle and his two hands with which to begin the world anew.  But it was hard to go back and begin again where he had begun forty years ago.  The bare thought of it was enough to discourage Godfrey, who declared that he wouldn’t do it, and made his words good by becoming a roving vagabond.  He spent the most of his time at the landing, watching the steamers as they came in, and the rest in wandering listlessly about the woods, shooting just game enough to keep him in powder, lead and tobacco.  His sole companion and friend was his son Daniel, who, being a chip of the old block, faithfully imitated his father’s lazy, useless mode of life.  Mrs. Evans and the younger son, David, were the only members of the family who worked.  They never lost an opportunity to turn an honest penny, and there were times when Godfrey and Dan would have gone supperless to bed if it had not been for these two faithful toilers.

Godfrey disliked this aimless, joyless existence as much as he disliked work, and even Dan at times longed for something better.  They both wanted to be rich.  Godfrey wanted to see his fine plantation, which was now abandoned to briers and cane, cultivated as it used to be; while it was Dan’s ambition to have two or three painted boats in the lake, to have a pointer following at his heels, and to do his shooting with a double-barrel gun that “broke in two in the middle.”  He wanted to take his morning’s exercise on a spotted pony—­a circus horse, he called it; and to wear a broadcloth suit, a Panama hat and patent leather boots, when he went to church on Sundays.  Don and Bert Gordon had all these aids to happiness, and they were the jolliest fellows he had ever seen—­always laughing, singing or whistling.  Dan thought he would be happy too, if he could only have so many fine things to call his own, but he could see no way to get them, and that made him angry.  He hated Don and Bert so heartily that he could never look at them without wishing that some evil might befall them.  He threatened to steal their horses, shoot their dogs, sink their boats, and do a host of other desperate things, believing that in this way he could render the two happy brothers as miserable as he was himself.