But he wept a great deal on the trip south from Washington. For most of the way it was night and there was no one to see him. Then, when dawn broke, his emotions were exhausted, squeezed dry of the capacity to feel grief or express it. Those early risers who saw the lone rider on the bay gelding travelling with a body slumped across the horse in front of the saddle, veered away from him. For there was something in his upright posture, the set of his head and his unwavering stare to the front which warned against physical approach or even a verbal greeting. He still had more than two miles to go when he caught sight of all that remained of his former home. Shafts of bright sunlight angling in low from the east pierced cruelly into the blackened ruin of the plantation house. The west wall still stood, more or less intact. And the stoop at the front was still there, littered with fallen masonry from the upper floors. But apart from this, the house was now no more than a pile of sooted stone and charred wood.
