Sometimes
they told the raiding soldiers where the property was concealed, and
at others they ran away without telling even their masters where the
valuables were hidden. General Gordon's old servant, Jordan, was one
of this stamp. He went off with the Union forces, who raided that
part of Mississippi, and before he went he told a rebel soldier,
Godfrey Evans, who happened to be at home on a furlough, and who was
skulking in the woods to avoid capture, that he had just buried a
barrel containing eighty thousand dollars in gold and silver in his
master's potato-patch, and that none of the family knew where it was.
This Godfrey Evans had been well off in the world at one time. He had
property to the amount of fifteen thousand dollars; but, like many
others, he lost it all during the war, and returned home after the
surrender of General Lee to find himself a poor man. His comfortable
house had been burned over the heads of his wife and children, who
were now living in a rude hut which some kind-hearted neighbors had
hastily erected; his negroes, who had made his money for him, were
all gone; his cattle had been slaughtered by both rebel and Union
troops, and his mules and horses carried off; his fine drove of hogs,
which ran loose in the woods, and upon which he relied to furnish his
year's supply of bacon, had wandered away and become wild; and
Godfrey had nothing but his rifle and his two hands with which to
begin the world anew.
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