they were free. It seemed instinctive with him. One dark night one of the tenants came over and begged him to go to the quarters to drive off some men, who were, he said, frightening the negroes. As our father was upwards of seventy years of age, and as we were not sure that in these lawless times personal harm was not meant to him in this affair, we entreated him not to go. The quarters were from a quarter to a half-mile off, and half the way was up a precipitous hill. But he seemed scarcely to hear our remonstrances, and went in all haste to find out what was the matter. Everything was quiet when he got there, and he received no connected account of the disturbance.
In the spring of 1868 Thomas had the great pleasure of a visit from Dr. Thomas Cooke, who had been his ward in early Gloucester days. Dr. Cooke's eldest son, Thomas Dabney Cooke, had spent a year at Burleigh in boyhood, and his father had long intended to bring some of his daughters to see his old friend. But time had slipped away, and still he had never felt that he could afford the journey. This spring he resolved to delay no longer. He was afraid, he said, that he might die without having brought his family to see the dearest friend of his life, and he came with three of his daughters. This visit was made at a time of the greatest poverty in the Burleigh house. A beautiful little incident that took place will show the courtly polish of this gentleman. One of Thomas's daughters was about to go to the wood-pile to get some chips for the fire. Dr. Cooke offered her his arm, and the two proceeded and collected the chips together in the basket, and came back in the same formal style. He felt intuitively that the young lady would not allow a venerable guest to go alone to perform this office, and his fine breeding showed him this way out of the difficulty.
In the fall of 1869 Thomas met with a serious pecuniary loss. A negro riot took place in the height of the cotton-picking season, and among other unhappy consequences the negroes abandoned the fields until the cotton had been spoiled by the wind and rain. Nearly the whole crop was lost. The seat of the
