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to include him.
    His strength and good disposition astound me. He lost so much--his brother Frank and his son Preston dead in battle, 3,000
    Lost Causes 25
    slaves gone, and both Millwood and Sand Hills burned by the enemy. He is living in an overseer's shack at Sand Hills, and cannot escape the accusation that he, not Sherman, burned Columbia by firing cotton bales to keep them from the Yankee looters.
    Yet he showed no dismay over any of this, expressing, instead, concern for others . . .
    Outside the pine house, Wade Hampton sat on an upright log that served as a chair. Lee's oldest cavalry commander, forty-seven now, carried himself with a certain stiffness. He'd been wounded in battle five times. Since coming home, he'd shaved his huge beard, leaving only a tuft beneath his mouth, though he still wore his great curving mustaches and side whiskers. Under an old broadcloth coat, he carried an ivory-handled revolver in a holster.
    Page 28

    "Laced coffee, General," Madeline said as she emerged into the dappled sunlight with two steaming tin cups. "Sugar and a little corn whiskey--though I'm afraid the coffee is just a brew from parched acorns."
    "Welcome all the same." Smiling, Hampton took his cup. Madeline sat down on a crate near a cluster of the trumpet-shaped yellow jasmine she loved.
    "I came to inquire about your welfare," he said to her. "Mont Royal is yours now--"
    "In a sense, yes. I don't own it."
    Hampton raised an eyebrow, and she explained that Tillet Main had left the plantation to his sons, Orry and Cooper, jointly. He had done so despite his long-standing quarrel with Cooper over slavery; at the end, blood ties and tradition had proved stronger in Tillet than anger or ideology. Like a majority of men of his age and time, Tillet looked to his sons because he prized his property and had a less than generous view of the business and financial abilities of women. When he wrote his will, he didn't worry about anything more than a token bequest of cash to each of his daughters, Ashton and Brett, presuming they would be provided for by their spouses. The will further stipulated that when
    °ne son predeceased the other, that son's title in the estate passed directly to the surviving brother.
    "So Cooper is the sole owner of record now. But he's generously lowed me to stay on here out of regard for Orry. I have the manage- lent °f the plantation, and the income from it, for as long as he remains
    owner, and so long as I pay the mortgage debt. I'm responsible for
    'f the operating expenses too, but those conditions are certainly reasonable."
    26 HEAVEN AND HELL
    "You're secure in this arrangement? I mean to say, it's legal and binding?"
    "Completely. Only weeks after we got word of Orry's death, Cooper formalized the arrangement in writing. The document makes it irrevocable."
    "Well,
    knowing how Carolinians value family ties and family
    property, I should think Mont Royal would stay with the Mains forever, then."
    "Yes, I'm confident of that." It was her single firm hold on security.
    "Unfortunately, there's no income at all right now, and no great prospect of any. About the best I can say in answer to your question about our welfare is that we're managing."
    Page 29

    "I suppose that's the best any of us can expect at present. My daughter Sally's marrying Colonel Johnny Haskell later this month. That lightens the clouds a little." He sipped from the cup. "Delicious. What do you hear from Charles?"
    "I had a letter two months ago. He said he hoped to go back in the army, out West."
    "I understand a great many Confederates are doing that. I hope they treat him decently. He was one of my best scouts. Iron Scouts, we called them. He lived up to the name, although, toward the end, I confess that I noticed him behaving strangely on occasion."
    Madeline nodded. "I noticed it when he came home this spring.
    The war hurt him. He fell in love with a woman in Virginia and she died bearing his son. He has the boy with him