CHAPTER IV.
Of all the memories of war, after the dear dead are buried, there is one that serves to bring the struggle back in all the intensity of its horrors--to stand both as a monument to those who bled and suffered and as a lonely sentinel mourning for the peace and plenty of the past--a blackened chimney.
Of all the houses, cabins, barns and cribs which had made up the home of the Carys a few short months ago nothing remained to-day but ashes and black ruin.

Only one building had been left unburned and this, before the war, had been the cabin of an overseer.

It had but two rooms, and a shallow attic, which was gained by means of an iron ladder reaching to a closely fitting scuttle in the ceiling.

The larger room was furnished meagerly with a rough deal table, several common chairs, and a double-doored cupboard against the wall.

In the deep, wide fire-place glowed a heap of raked-up embers, on which, suspended from an iron crane, a kettle simmered, sadly, as if in grief for her long-lost brother pots and pans.