the others, and the children who had grown up since emancipation,
came to use it almost interchangeably with the ordinary form of
address. Thus Eliab Hill, always nervously alive to the fact of
freedom, never allowed the words to pass his lips after the Surrender,
except when talking with Mrs. Le Moyne, to whose kindness he owed
so much-in early years. On the other hand, Nimbus, with an equal
aversion to everything connected with slavery, but without the
same mental activity, sometimes dropped into the old familiar habit.
He would have died rather than use the word at another's dictation
or as a badge of inferiority, but the habit was too strong for one
of his grade of intellect to break away from at once. Since the
success of the old slaveholding element of the South in subverting
the governments based on the equality of political right and power,
this form of address has become again almost universal except in
the cities and large towns.



CHAPTER XI.

RED WING.


Situated on the sandy, undulating chain of low, wooded hills
which separated the waters of two tributaries of the Roanoke, at
the point where the "big road" from the West crossed the country
road which ran northward along the crest of the ridge, as if in
search of dry footing between the rich valleys on either hand, was
the place known as Red Wing. The "big road" had been a thoroughfare
from the West in the old days before steam diverted the ways of