As time went by the condition of things at Oakland changed--as it did
everywhere else. The boys' mother, like all the other ladies of the
country, was so devoted to the cause that she gave to the soldiers
until there was nothing left. After that there was a failure of the
crops, and the immediate necessities of the family and the hands on
the place were great.
There was no sugar nor coffee nor tea. These luxuries had been given
up long before. An attempt was made to manufacture sugar out of the
sorghum, or sugar-cane, which was now being cultivated as an
experiment; but it proved unsuccessful, and molasses made from the
cane was the only sweetening. The boys, however, never liked anything
sweetened with molasses, so they gave up everything that had molasses
in it. Sassafras tea was tried as a substitute for tea, and a drink
made out of parched corn and wheat, of burnt sweet potato and other
things, in the place of coffee; but none of them were fit to drink--at
least so the boys thought. The wheat crop proved a failure; but the
corn turned out very fine, and the boys learned to live on corn bread,
as there was no wheat bread.
The soldiers still came by, and the house was often full of young
officers who came to see the boys' cousins. The boys used to ride the
horses to and from the stables, and, being perfectly fearless, became
very fine riders.
Several times, among the visitors, came the young colonel who had
commanded the regiment that had camped at the bridge the first year of
the war. It did not seem to the boys that Cousin Belle liked him, for
she took much longer to dress when he came; and if there were other
officers present she would take very little notice of the colonel.
Both boys were in love with her, and after considerable hesitation had
written her a joint letter to tell her so, at which she laughed
heartily and kissed them both and called them her sweethearts. But,
though they were jealous of several young officers who came from time
to time, they felt sorry for the colonel,--their cousin was so mean to
him. They were on the best terms with him, and had announced their
intention of going into his regiment if only the war should last long
enough. When he came there was always a scramble to get his horse;
though of all who came to Oakland he rode the wildest horses, as both
boys knew by practical experience.
At length the soldiers moved off too far to permit them to come on
visits, and things were very dull. So it was for a long while.
But one evening in May, about sunset, as the boys were playing in the
yard, a man came riding through the place on the way to Richmond. His
horse showed that he had been riding hard. He asked the nearest way to
"Ground-Squirrel Bridge." The Yankees, he said, were coming. It was a
raid. He had ridden ahead of them, and had left them about Greenbay
depot, which they had set on fire. He was in too great a hurry to stop
and get something to eat, and he rode off, leaving much excitement
behind him; for Greenbay was only eight miles away, and Oakland lay
right between two roads to Richmond, down one or the other of which
the party of raiders must certainly pass.
It was the first time the boys ever saw their mother exhibit so much
emotion as she then did. She came to the door and called:
"Balla, come here." Her voice sounded to the boys a little strained
and troubled, and they ran up the steps and stood by her. Balla came
to the portico, and looked up with an air of inquiry. He, too, showed
excitement.
"Balla, I want you to know that if you wish to go, you can do so."
"Hi, Mistis----" began Balla, with an air of reproach; but she cut him
short and kept on.
"I want you all to know it." She was speaking now so as to be heard by
the cook and the maids who were standing about the yard listening to
her. "I want you all to know it--every one on the place! You can go if
you wish; but, if you go, you can never come back!"
"Hi, Mistis," broke in Uncle Balla, "whar is I got to go? I wuz born
on dis place an' I 'spec' to die here, an' be buried right _yonder_;"
and he turned and pointed up to the dark clumps of trees that marked
the graveyard on the hill, a half mile away, where the colored people
were buried. "Dat I does," he affirmed positively. "Y' all sticks by
us, and we'll stick by you."
"I know I ain't gwine nowhar wid no Yankees or nothin'," said Lucy
Ann, in an undertone.
"Dee tell me dee got hoofs and horns," laughed one of the women in the
yard.
The boys' mother started to say something further to Balla, but though
she opened her lips, she did not speak; she turned suddenly and walked
into the house and into her chamber, where she shut the door behind
her. The boys thought she was angry, but when they softly followed her
a few minutes afterward, she got up hastily from where she had been
kneeling beside the bed, and they saw that she had been crying. A
murmur under the window called them back to the portico. It had begun
to grow dark; but a bright spot was glowing on the horizon, and on
this every one's gaze was fixed.
"Where is it, Balla? What is it?" asked the boys' mother, her voice
no longer strained and harsh, but even softer than usual.
"It's the depot, madam. They's burnin' it. That man told me they was
burnin' ev'ywhar they went."
"Will they be here to-night?" asked his mistress.
"No, marm; I don' hardly think they will. That man said they couldn't
travel more than thirty miles a day; but they'll be plenty of 'em here
to-morrow--to breakfast." He gave a nervous sort of laugh.
"Here,--you all come here," said their mistress to the servants. She
went to the smoke-house and unlocked it. "Go in there and get down the
bacon--take a piece, each of you." A great deal was still left.
"Balla, step here." She called him aside and spoke earnestly in an
undertone.
"Yes'm, that's so; that's jes' what I wuz gwine do," the boys heard
him say.
Their mother sent the boys out. She went and locked herself in her
room, but they heard her footsteps as she turned about within, and now
and then they heard her opening and shutting drawers and moving
chairs.
In a little while she came out.
"Frank, you and Willy go and tell Balla to come to the chamber door.
He may be out in the stable."
They dashed out, proud to bear so important a message. They could not
find him, but an hour later they heard him, coming from the stable.
He at once went into the house. They rushed into the chamber, where
they found the door of the closet open.
"Balla, come in here," called their mother from within. "Have you got
them safe?" she asked.
"Yes'm; jes' as safe as they kin be. I want to be 'bout here when they
come, or I'd go down an' stay whar they is."
"What is it?" asked the boys.
"Where is the best place to put that?" she said, pointing to a large,
strong box in which, they knew, the finest silver was kept; indeed,
all excepting what was used every day on the table.
"Well, I declar', Mistis, that's hard to tell," said the old driver,
"without it's in the stable."
"They may burn that down."
"That's so; you might bury it under the floor of the smoke-house?"
"I have heard that they always look for silver there," said the boys'
mother. "How would it do to bury it in the garden?"
"That's the very place I was gwine name," said Balla, with flattering
approval. "They can't burn _that_ down, and if they gwine dig for it
then they'll have to dig a long time before they git over that big
garden." He stooped and lifted up one end of the box to test its
weight.
"I thought of the other end of the flower-bed, between the big
rose-bush and the lilac."
"That's the very place I had in my mind," declared the old man. "They
won' never fine it dyah!"
"We know a good place," said the boys both together; "it's a heap
better than that. It's where we bury our treasures when we play
'Black-beard the Pirate.'"
"Very well," said their mother; "I don't care to know where it is
until after to-morrow, anyhow. I know I can trust you," she added,
addressing Balla.
"Yes'm, you know dat," said he, simply. "I'll jes' go an' git my hoe."
"The garden hasn't got a roof to it, has it, Unc' Balla?" asked Willy,
quietly.
"Go 'way from here, boy," said the old man, making a sweep at him with
his hand. "That boy ain' never done talkin' 'bout that thing yit," he
added, with a pleased laugh, to his mistress.
"And you ain't ever given me all those chickens either," responded
Willy, forgetting his grammar.
"Oh, well, I'm _gwi'_ do it; ain't you hear me say I'm gwine do it?"
he laughed as he went out.
The boys were too excited to get sleepy before the silver was hidden.
Their mother told them they might go down into the garden and help
Balla, on condition that they would not talk.
"That's the way we always do when we bury the treasure. Ain't it,
Willy?" asked Frank.
"If a man speaks, it's death!" declared Willy, slapping his hand on
his side as if to draw a sword, striking a theatrical attitude and
speaking in a deep voice.
"Give the 'galleon' to us," said Frank.
"No; be off with you," said their mother.
"That ain't the way," said Frank. "A pirate never digs the hole until
he has his treasure at hand. To do so would prove him but a novice;
wouldn't it, Willy?"
"Well, I leave it all to you, my little Buccaneers," said their
mother, laughing. "I'll take care of the spoons and forks we use every
day. I'll just hide them away in a hole somewhere."
The boys started off after Balla with a shout, but remembered their
errand and suddenly hushed down to a little squeal of delight at being
actually engaged in burying treasure--real silver. It seemed too good
to be true, and withal there was a real excitement about it, for how
could they know but that some one might watch them from some
hiding-place, or might even fire into them as they worked?
They met the old fellow as he was coming from the carriage-house with
a hoe and a spade in his hands. He was on his way to the garden in a
very straightforward manner, but the boys made him understand that to
bury treasure it was necessary to be particularly secret, and after
some little grumbling, Balla humored them.
The difficulty of getting the box of silver out of the house secretly,
whilst all the family were up, and the servants were moving about, was
so great that this part of the affair had to be carried on in a manner
different from the usual programme of pirates of the first water. Even
the boys had to admit this; and they yielded to old Balla's advice on
this point, but made up for it by additional formality, ceremony, and
secrecy in pointing out the spot where the box was to be hid.
Old Balla was quite accustomed to their games and fun--their "pranks,"
as he called them. He accordingly yielded willingly when they marched
him to a point at the lower end of the yard, on the opposite side from
the garden, and left him. But he was inclined to give trouble when
they both reappeared with a gun, and in a whisper announced that they
must march first up the ditch which ran by the spring around the foot
of the garden.
"Look here, boys; I ain' got time to fool with you chillern," said the
old man. "Ain't you hear your ma tell me she 'pend on me to bury that
silver what yo' gran'ma and gran'pa used to eat off o'--an' don' wan'
nobody to know nothin' 'bout it? An' y' all comin' here with guns,
like you huntin' squ'rr'ls, an' now talkin' 'bout wadin' in the
ditch!"
"But, Unc' Balla, that's the way all buccaneers do," protested Frank.
"Yes, buccaneers always go by water," said Willy.
"And we can stoop in the ditch and come in at the far end of the
garden, so nobody can see us," added Frank.
"Bookanear or bookafar,--I's gwine in dat garden and dig a hole wid my
hoe, an' I is too ole to be wadin' in a ditch like chillern. I got the
misery in my knee now, so bad I'se sca'cely able to stand. I don't
know huccome y' all ain't satisfied with the place you' ma an' I done
pick, anyways."
This was too serious a mutiny for the boys. So it was finally greed
that one gun should be returned to the office, and that they should
enter by the gate, after which Balla was to go with the boys by the
way they should show him, and see the spot they thought of.
They took him down through the weeds around the garden, crouching
under the rose-bushes, and at last stopped at a spot under the slope,
completely surrounded by shrubbery.
"Here is the spot," said Frank in a whisper, pointing under one of the
bushes.
"It's in a line with the longest limb of the big oak-tree by the
gate," added Willy, "and when this locust bush and that cedar grow to
be big trees, it will be just half-way between them."
As this seemed to Balla a very good place, he set to work at once to
dig, the two boys helping him as well as they could. It took a great
deal longer to dig the hole in the dark than they had expected, and
when they got back to the house everything was quiet.
The boys had their hats pulled over their eyes, and had turned their
jackets inside out to disguise themselves.
"It's a first-rate place! Ain't it, Unc' Balla?" they said, as they
entered the chamber where their mother and aunt were waiting for them.
"Do you think it will do, Balla?" their mother asked.
"Oh, yes, madam; it's far enough, an' they got mighty comical ways to
get dyah, wadin' in ditch an' things--it will do. I ain' sho' I kin
fin' it ag'in myself." He was not particularly enthusiastic. Now,
however, he shouldered the box, with a grunt at its weight, and the
party went slowly out through the back door into the dark. The glow of
the burning depot was still visible in the west.
Then it was decided that Willy should go before--he said to
"reconnoitre," Balla said "to open the gate and lead the way,"--and
that Frank should bring up the rear.
They trudged slowly on through the darkness, Frank and Willy watching
on every side, old Balla stooping under the weight of the big box.
After they were some distance in the garden they heard, or thought
they heard, a sound back at the gate, but decided that it was nothing
but the latch clicking; and they went on down to their hiding place.
In a little while the black box was well settled in the hole, and the
dirt was thrown upon it. The replaced earth made something of a mound,
which was unfortunate. They had not thought of this; but they covered
it with leaves, and agreed that it was so well hidden, the Yankees
would never dream of looking there.
"Unc' Balla, where are your horses?" asked one of the boys.
"That's for me to know, an' them to find out what kin," replied the
old fellow with a chuckle of satisfaction.
The whole party crept back out of the garden, and the boys were soon
dreaming of buccaneers and pirates.