The white, sanded road led upward through a great park, splendid
with oak and beech and maple, and elms of great size. Nearer the house
he came to the cedars and clipped pines, like those surrounding his
mother's own home.
He opened the iron gate that led to the house, and tied his horse inside.
Here was the same desolation and silence that he had beheld at his own
home. The grass on the lawn, although withered and dry from the intense
drought that had prevailed in Kentucky that summer, was long and showed
signs of neglect. The great stone pillars of the portico, from the
shelter of which Harry and his father and their friends had fought Skelly
and his mountaineers, were stained, and around their bases were dirty
from the sand and earth blown against them. The lawn and even the
portico were littered with autumn leaves.
Dick felt the chill settling down on him again. War, not war with armies,
but war in its results, had swept over his uncle's home as truly as it
had swept over his mother's. There was no sign of a human being.
Doubtless the colored servants had fled to the Union armies, and to the
freedom which they as yet knew so little how to use.
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