Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/219

 Rh He had left his wife and a houseful of children of all ages, to whom he was tenderly attached, on the plantation. He let his master know in every way that he was ready to stay by his side as long as he wished him.

At Burleigh we heard every day of the arrival of the different negroes. We knew that our father yearned to follow them, and that he would do so soon. Each hour we trembled lest we should see him ride up.

It was at this time that we resolved to get to him before he could reach us. We had been living within the lines for a week, and we felt that we could no longer stay in our home under the increasing anxieties.

We packed a few necessary things in two trunks to be taken off by Uncle Isaac in a cart, and we prepared to get away on foot at daylight, before the soldiers came from the camp. They had said on leaving us the evening before that they were coming back in the morning for the silver and to send pickets in every direction to search for papa, and to burn up the house and us in it, too.

Heavy firing had been going on towards the north for some days. The Federal soldiers had told us with loud boasts that they were whipping our Southern soldiers from the battle-fields. Fortunately, we did not know that Edward was in those fights. We were as completely cut off from the outer world as if we had been ourselves in a state of siege, and knew nothing except what they told us. We tried not to believe their stories of our disasters. But they were true. We heard the battle of Raymond on the 12th, on the 14th the battle of Jackson, and on the morning of the 16th the heaviest firing that we had yet heard came from the battle-field of Baker's Creek,—Champion Hill General Grant called it. Fifteen thousand Union soldiers and twenty-three thousand Southern soldiers were present at that battle; but six thousand six hundred and sixty-six Southern muskets were not fired, owing to some disagreement between the commanders it was said.

When the sound of these guns reached our ears we were speeding away from home as fast as our feet