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TWO LITTLE CONFEDERATES
* * * * *
BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE
Tommy Trot's Visit to Santa Claus
Santa Claus's Partner
A Captured Santa Claus
Among the Camps
Two Little Confederates
The Page Story Book
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
* * * * *
TWO LITTLE CONFEDERATES
by
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
Illustrated
[Illustration: "I'M IN COMMAND," SAID THE GENTLEMAN, SMILING AT HIM
OVER THE TOWEL.]
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1929
Copyright, 1888, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Copyright, 1916, by
Thomas Nelson Page
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY MOTHER
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"I'm in command," said the gentleman,
smiling at him over the towel _Frontispiece_
PAGE
The old man walked up to the door, and
standing on one side, flung it open 29
"Gentlemen, marsters, don't teck my horses,
ef you please," said Uncle Balla 69
Frank and Willy capture a member of the
conscript-guard 95
The boy faced his captor, who held a strap
in one hand 129
"Look! Look! They are running. They are
beating our men!" exclaimed the boys 143
The boys sell their cakes to the Yankees 159
Some of the servants came back to their old home 167
TWO LITTLE CONFEDERATES.
CHAPTER I.
The "Two Little Confederates" lived at Oakland. It was not a handsome
place, as modern ideas go, but down in Old Virginia, where the
standard was different from the later one, it passed in old times as
one of the best plantations in all that region. The boys thought it
the greatest place in the world, of course excepting Richmond, where
they had been one year to the fair, and had seen a man pull fire out
of his mouth, and do other wonderful things. It was quite secluded. It
lay, it is true, right between two of the county roads, the
Court-house Road being on one side, and on the other the great
"Mountain Road," down which the large covered wagons with six horses
and jingling bells used to go; but the lodge lay this side of the one,
and "the big woods," where the boys shot squirrels, and hunted
'possums and coons, and which reached to the edge of "Holetown,"
stretched between the house and the other, so that the big gate-post
where the semi-weekly mail was left by the mail-rider each Tuesday
and Friday afternoon was a long walk, even by the near cut through the
woods. The railroad was ten miles away by the road. There was a nearer
way, only about half the distance, by which the negroes used to walk
and which during the war, after all the horses were gone, the boys,
too, learned to travel; but before that, the road by Trinity Church
and Honeyman's Bridge was the only route, and the other was simply a
dim bridle-path, and the "horseshoe-ford" was known to the initiated
alone.
The mansion itself was known on the plantation as "the great-house,"
to distinguish it from all the other houses on the place, of which
there were many. It had as many wings as the angels in the vision of
Ezekiel.
These additions had been made, some in one generation, some in
another, as the size of the family required; and finally, when there
was no side of the original structure to which another wing could be
joined, a separate building had been erected on the edge of the yard
which was called "The Office," and was used as such, as well as for a
lodging-place by the young men of the family. The privilege of
sleeping in the Office was highly esteemed, for, like the _toga
virilis_, it marked the entrance upon manhood of the youths who were
fortunate enough to enjoy it. There smoking was admissible, there the
guns were kept in the corner, and there the dogs were allowed to
sleep at the feet of their young masters, or in bed with them, if they
preferred it.
In one of the rooms in this building the boys went to school whilst
small, and another they looked forward to having as their own when
they should be old enough to be elevated to the coveted dignity of
sleeping in the Office. Hugh already slept there, and gave himself
airs in proportion; but Hugh they regarded as a very aged person; not
as old, it was true, as their cousins who came down from college at
Christmas, and who, at the first outbreak of war, all rushed into the
army; but each of these was in the boys' eyes a Methuselah. Hugh had
his own horse and the double-barrelled gun, and when a fellow got
those there was little material difference between him and other men,
even if he did have to go to the academy,--which was really something
like going to school.
The boys were Frank and Willy; Frank being the eldest. They went by
several names on the place. Their mother called them her "little men,"
with much pride; Uncle Balla spoke of them as "them chillern," which
generally implied something of reproach; and Lucy Ann, who had been
taken into the house to "run after" them when they were little boys,
always coupled their names as "Frank 'n' Willy." Peter and Cole did
the same when their mistress was not by.
When there first began to be talk at Oakland about the war, the boys
thought it would be a dreadful thing; their principal ideas about war
being formed from an intimate acquaintance with the Bible and its
accounts of the wars of the Children of Israel, in which men, women
and children were invariably put to the sword. This gave a vivid
conception of its horrors.
One evening, in the midst of a discussion about the approaching
crisis, Willy astonished the company, who were discussing the merits
of probable leaders of the Union armies, by suddenly announcing that
he'd "bet they didn't have any general who could beat Joab."
Up to the time of the war, the boys had led a very uneventful, but a
very pleasant life. They used to go hunting with Hugh, their older
brother, when he would let them go, and after the cows with Peter and
Cole. Old Balla, the driver, was their boon comrade and adviser, and
taught them to make whips, and traps for hares and birds, as he had
taught them to ride and to cobble shoes.
He lived alone (for his wife had been set free years before, and lived
in Philadelphia). His room over "the old kitchen" was the boys'
play-room when he would permit them to come in. There were so many
odds and ends in it that it was a delightful place.
Then the boys played blindman's-buff in the house, or hide-and-seek
about the yard or garden, or upstairs in their den, a narrow alcove
at the top of the house.
The little willow-shadowed creek, that ran through the meadow behind
the barn, was one of their haunts. They fished in it for minnows and
little perch; they made dams and bathed in it; and sometimes they
played pirates upon its waters.
Once they made an extended search up and down its banks for any
fragments of Pharaoh's chariots which might have been washed up so
high; but that was when they were younger and did not have much
sense.