One of Thomas Dabney's friends, Adam Giffen, of New Orleans, himself a refugee in Mobile at this time, came to offer his purse to the family of his friend. Thomas was absent and his daughter refused to accept the money, fearing that she would not be able to repay it. "I do not care if I never see it again," Mr. Giffen said, as he thrust two thousand dollars into her hand. "Your father will pay me some day if he can, and if he cannot, I shall not consider it a debt."
She then tried to give to Mr. Giffen a receipt for the money, but he refused to receive it.
"A receipt from your father's daughter! No, indeed, and no thanks either." In a few weeks Thomas was able to return the two thousand dollars to his generous friend.
The cavalry company had withdrawn from their camp on the Tallahala Creek. Soon after the negroes were brought down to Mobile,—the one hundred who had not left the plantation. The money and silver and wearing apparel also of the family were brought down, and a good many books and a few other things that were valued as mementos. Then a sale was held at Burleigh, and not only were the furniture, etc., sold out of the house, but the stock and plantation implements of all sorts were disposed of. Our father was opposed to giving up the accumulations of years in this manner, but he yielded to his daughters, and the plantation and home were stripped bare. A handful of Confederate money was all that was brought by the sale.
CHAPTER XVIII.
REFUGEES.
At the end of the six months in Mobile, papa decided to take his family to Macon, Georgia. There he bought a little cottage with four diminutive rooms. As we drove up to it in the old family carriage, which
