Nearing the gate, they passed a small open space in which stood a simple marble shaft, erected to the memory of the Confederate Dead.
A wealth of fresh flowers lay at its base. The colonel took off his hat as he stood before it for a moment with bowed head. But for the mercy of God, he might have been one of those whose deaths as well as deeds were thus commemorated.
Beyond this memorial, impressive in its pure simplicity, and between it and the gate, in an obtrusively conspicuous spot stood a florid monument of granite, marble and bronze, of glaring design and strangely out of keeping with the simple dignity and quiet restfulness of the surroundings; a monument so striking that the colonel paused involuntarily and read the inscription in bronze letters on the marble shaft above the granite base:
"'_Sacred to the Memory of Joshua Fetters and Elizabeth Fetters, his Wife._
"'_Life's work well done, Life's race well run, Life's crown well won, Then comes rest._'"
"A beautiful sentiment, if somewhat trite," said the colonel, "but an atrocious monument."
"Do you think so?" exclaimed the lady. "Most people think the monument fine, but smile at the sentiment."
"In matters of taste," returned the colonel, "the majority are always wrong. But why smile at the sentiment? Is it, for some reason, inappropriate to this particular case? Fetters--Fetters--the name seems familiar. Who was Fetters, Laura?"
"He was the speculator," she said, "who bought and sold negroes, and kept dogs to chase runaways; old Mr. Fetters--you must remember old Josh Fetters? When I was a child, my coloured mammy used him for a bogeyman for me, as for her own children."
"'Look out, honey,' she'd say, 'ef you ain' good, ole Mr. Fettuhs 'll ketch you.'"
Yes, he remembered now. Fetters had been a character in Clarendon--not an admirable character, scarcely a good character, almost a bad character; a necessary adjunct of an evil system, and, like other parasites, worse than the body on which he fed; doing the dirty work of slavery, and very naturally despised by those whose instrument he was, but finding consolation by taking it out of the Negroes in the course of his business. The colonel would have expected Fetters to lie in an unmarked grave in his own back lot, or in the potter's field. Had he so far escaped the ruin of the institution on which he lived, as to leave an estate sufficient to satisfy his heirs and also pay for this expensive but vulgar monument?