My father remains with us." Mrs.Howard was deeply mortified by the conduct of her sisters, but tried to excuse them to those whom they were treating with such rudeness and ingratitude.
"Louise and Enna are very bitter," she said, talking with Rose and Elsie in the drawing-room after tea; "but they have suffered much in the loss of their husbands and our brothers; to say nothing of property.

Sherman's soldiers were very lawless--some of them, I mean; and they were not all Americans--and inflicted much injury.

Enna was very rude and exasperating to the party who visited Roselands, and was roughly handled in consequence; robbed of her watch and all her jewelry and money.
"They treated our poor old father with great indignity also; dragged him down the steps of the veranda, took his watch, rifled his pockets, plundered the house, then set it on fire and burned it to the ground." Her listeners wept as she went on to describe more minutely the scenes of violence at Roselands, Ashlands, Pinegrove, and other plantations and towns in the vicinity; among them the residences of the pastor and his venerable elder, whose visits were so comforting to Mrs.Travilla in her last sickness.
"They were Union men," Lora said, in conclusion, "spending their time and strength in self-denying efforts for the spiritual good of both whites and blacks, and had suffered much at the hands of the Confederates; yet were stripped of everything by Sherman's troops, threatened with instant death, and finally left to starve, actually being without food for several days." "Dreadful!" exclaimed Rose.

"I could not have believed any of our officers would allow such things.

But war is very cruel, and gives opportunity to wicked, cruel men, on both sides to indulge their evil propensities and passions.