the unglazed window, had fallen from its hinges, and lay rotting in the
rank grass and jimson-weeds beneath. This building, I learned when I
bought the place, had been used as a schoolhouse for several years prior
to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained
unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter
within its walls from the chill rains and nipping winds of winter.

One day my wife requested me to build her a new kitchen. The house
erected by us, when we first came to live upon the vineyard, contained a
very conveniently arranged kitchen; but for some occult reason my wife
wanted a kitchen in the back yard, apart from the dwelling-house, after
the usual Southern fashion. Of course I had to build it.

To save expense, I decided to tear down the old schoolhouse, and use the
lumber, which was in a good state of preservation, in the construction
of the new kitchen. Before demolishing the old house, however, I made an
estimate of the amount of material contained in it, and found that I
would have to buy several hundred feet of lumber additional, in order to
build the new kitchen according to my wife's plan.

One morning old Julius McAdoo, our colored coachman, harnessed the gray
mare to the rockaway, and drove my wife and me over to the sawmill from
which I meant to order the new lumber. We drove down the long lane which
led from our house to the plank-road; following the plank-road for about
a mile, we turned into a road running through the forest and across the
swamp to the sawmill beyond. Our carriage jolted over the half-rotted
corduroy road which traversed the swamp, and then climbed the long hill
leading to the sawmill. When we reached the mill, the foreman had gone
over to a neighboring farmhouse, probably to smoke or gossip, and we
were compelled to await his return before we could transact our