Big House at the end of the long avenue. Whenever she wanted to be by herself a while, in some quiet place so she could think, she went and sat on one of the old stone benches in the weed-grown flower garden; nobody would disturb her.
The great silent house looked grand and solemn, with its high gray roof and tall red chimneys. She had a timid feeling when she walked near it or sat alone in the garden, lest a ghost of somebody who once lived there, a servant or one of the fine white ladies, should call out to her and ask her what she wanted.
The plantation owners, had lived there many a year, ruling the land and the tides in the rice-fields as firmly as they ruled the black people whom they bought and sold as freely as they did the mules which slept in the great open stables and ate out of long wooden troughs. Black people used to make up a part of the plantation's wealth the same as the carriage and saddle horses with their well-rubbed, shining hides.
They were valued according to their strength and sense. The weak and stupid were sold. Only the best were kept. A good thing. Mary could see it now. The white people were gone. The forest had taken back many of their fields,
