Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/366

358 We remained at the "Refugee House" for three weeks, my mother in the meantime making efforts to get into town; each day she would walk almost there. When she did get there she found the vandalism was great, the beds ripped up, every mirror was run through with a bayonet, one panel of each door cut out, although none of the doors were locked, and the furniture nearly all broken up.

The confusion and dirt were appalling and it required a stout heart to begin to put things straight. I think my mother had fondly hoped that she would find something left somewhere about the house, but of course everything of value was taken and all of the china broken into small bits. Our house seemed to have been used as a storage house, or something of that kind, from the amount of provisions we found, but of course we could not use any of them. We were very thankful to find no dead bodies there.

My mother went back to the "Refugee House" that night, and after several days there, having found a wagon going into town, she took us out to the public road and we bade adieu to to refugeeing for a time. My mother, with no assistance but what we children could give, succeeded in cleaning up the house and we took up our abode in one room, as we could barely find furniture for that.

A stove was found, and fortunately before the shelling, my mother had gotten a good supply of wood, which was in the cellar. That night about dark we heard a low tap on the window, and my mother asking who was there, found it was Beverley Brooks, a colored man, who had just heard she was in town and came with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of milk, and every night during the rest of that dreadful winter did he tap on the window and hand in a pitcher of milk and a loaf of bread.

He had staid in town during the shelling and had managed to keep his cow and all his belongings. We three children with Ca'line would sit around the stove every night and toast our bread on the old bayonet brother had found on the