FOLKS FROM DIXIE
THE COLONEL'S AWAKENING
It was the morning before Christmas. The cold winter sunlight fell brightly through the window into a small room where an old man was sitting. The room, now bare and cheerless, still retained evidences of having once been the abode of refinement and luxury. It was the one open chamber of many in a great rambling old Virginia house, which in its time had been one of the proudest in the county. But it had been in the path of the hurricane of war, and had been shorn of its glory as a tree is stripped of its foliage. Now, like the bare tree, dismantled, it remained, and this one old man, with the aristocratic face, clung to it like the last leaf.
He did not turn his head when an ancient serving-man came in and began laying the things for breakfast. After a while the servant spoke: "I got a monst'ous fine breakfus' fu' you dis mo'nin', Mas' Estridge. I got fresh aigs, an'
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