"You fools, hold your tongues!" stormed the young man, losing his temper. "Send somebody out here to take my horse or I'll give you something to shout over in earnest."
The shrieks trembled high for an instant, and then died out in a despairing moan, while the blanched face of an old servant appeared in the doorway.
"Is hit you er yo' ha'nt, Marse Jonathan?" he inquired humbly.
"Come here, you doddering idiot, and take my horse."
But half reassured the negro came a step or two forward, and made a feeble clutch at the reins, which dropped from his grasp when the roosting turkeys stirred uneasily on the bough above.
"I'se de butler, marster, en I ain never sot foot in de stable sence de days er ole miss."
"Where's my mother?"
"Miss Angela, she's done gone up ter town en Miss Kesiah she's done gone erlong wid 'er."
"Is the house closed?"
"Naw, suh, hit ain closed, but Miss Molly she's got de keys up yonder at de house er de overseer."
"Well, send somebody with a grain of sense out here, and I'll look up
Miss Molly."
At this the butler vanished promptly into the kitchen, and a minute later a half-grown mulatto boy relieved Gay of his horse, while he pointed to a path through an old apple orchard that led to the cottage of the overseer. As the young man passed under the gnarled boughs to a short flagged walk before the small, whitewashed house in which "Miss Molly" lived, he wondered idly if the lady who kept the keys would prove to be the amazing little person he had seen some hours earlier perched on the load of fodder in the ox-cart. The question was settled almost before it was asked, for a band of lamplight streamed suddenly from the door of the cottage, and in the centre of it appeared the figure of a girl in a white dress, with red stockings showing under her short skirts, and a red ribbon filleting the thick brown curls on her forehead. From her movements he judged that she was mixing a bowl of soft food for the old hound at her feet, and he waited until she had called the dog inside for his supper, before he went forward and spoke her name in his pleasant voice.
At the sound she turned with a start, and he saw her vivid little face, with the wonderful eyes, go white for a minute.
"So you are Mr. Jonathan? I thought so," she said at last, "but grandfather told me you sent no word of your coming."
She spoke quickly, with a refinement of accent which puzzled him until he remembered the malicious hints Solomon Hatch had let fall at the tavern. That she was, in reality, of his blood and the child of his uncle, he had not doubted since the moment she had smiled at him from her seat on the oxcart. How much was known, he now wondered. Had his uncle provided for her? Was his mother—was his Aunt Kesiah—aware of the truth?
"She missed my letter, I suppose," he replied. "Has she been long away?"
"Only a week. She is expected home day after to-morrow."
"Then I shall beg you to open the house for me."
She had turned back to the old hound, and was bending over to place his bowl of bread and milk on the hearth. A log fire, in which a few pine branches stood out illuminated like boughs of flame, filled the big stone fireplace, which was crudely whitewashed to resemble the low walls of the room. A kettle hung on an iron crane before the blaze, and the singing of the water made a cheerful noise amid a silence which struck Gay suddenly as hostile. When the girl raised her head he saw that her face had grown hard and cold, and that the expression of her eyes had changed to one of indignant surprise. The charming coquetry had fled from her look, yet her evident aversion piqued him into a half smiling, half serious interest. He wondered if she would marry that fine looking rustic, the miller, and if the riotous Gay blood in her veins would flow placidly in her mother's class? Had she, too, inherited, if not the name, yet the weaknesses of an older race? Was she, like himself, cursed with swift fancies and swifter disillusionments? How frail she was, and how brilliant! How innocent and how bitter!
He turned away, ostensibly to examine a print on the wall, and while his back was toward her, he felt that her gaze stabbed him like the thrust of a knife. Wheeling quickly about, he met her look, but to his amazement, she continued to stare back at him with the expression of indignant surprise still in her face. How she hated him and, by Jove, how she could hate! She reminded him of a little wild brown animal as she stood there with her teeth showing between her parted red lips and her eyes flashing defiance. The next minute he found himself asking if she could ever grow gentle—could ever soften enough to allow herself to be stroked? He remembered Solomon Hatch's remark that "she was onmerciful to an entire sex," and in spite of his effort at composure, a laugh sprang to his lips.
In the centre of the room a table was laid, and going over to it, she busied herself with the cups and saucers as though she were anxious to put a disagreeable presence out of her thoughts.
"May I share your supper?" he asked, and waited, not without amusement, for her answer.
"I'm sorry there isn't any for you at the big house," she answered politely. "If you will sit down, I'll tell Delily to bring in some batter bread."
"And you?"
"I'll have mine with grandfather. He's out in the barn giving medicine to the red cow."
While she spoke Delily entered with a plate of cornbread and a pot of coffee, and a minute later Reuben Merryweather paused on the threshold to shake off a sprinkling of bran from his hair and beard. He was a bent, mild looking old man, with a wooden leg which made a stumping noise when he walked, and a pair of wistful brown eyes, like those of an aged hound that has been worn out by hard service. Past seventy now, his youth had been trained to a different civilization, and there was a touching gentleness in his face, as if he expressed still the mental attitude of a class which had existed merely as a support or a foil to the order above it. Without spirit to resent, he, with his fellows, had endured the greatest evils of slavery. With the curse of free labour on the land, there had been no incentive for toil, no hire for the labourer. Like an incubus the system had lain over them, stifling all energy, checking all progress, retarding all prosperity save the prosperity of the great land-owners. Then the soil had changed hands, and where the plough had broken the earth, the seeds of a democracy had germinated and put forth from the very blood of the battlefields. In the upward pressure of class, he had seen the stability of custom yield at last to the impetus of an energy that was not racial but individual. Yet from the transition he had remained always a little apart. Reverence had become for him a habit of mind, and he had learned that respect could outlive even a belief in the thing upon which it was founded. Mr. Jonathan and he had been soldiers together. His old commander still entered his thoughts to the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon, and a single sublime action at Malvern Hill had served in the mind of the soldier to spread a legendary glamour over a life which held hardly another incident that was worthy of remembrance.
At his entrance Molly melted from her hostile attitude, and while she hung on the old man's breast, Gay noticed, with surprise, that she was made up of enchanting curves and delicious softness. Her sharpened features grew rounder, and her thin red lips lost their hardness of outline. When she raised her head after a minute, he saw that the light in her eyes adorned and enriched her. By Jove, he had never imagined that she could change and colour like that!
"You are late, grandfather," said the girl, "I was coming to look for you with a lantern."
"The red cow kept me," answered the old man, adding as he held out his hand to Gay, "So you've come at last, Mr. Jonathan. Your mother will be pleased."
"I was sorry to find her absent," replied Gay, "and I was just asking your granddaughter if she would permit me to join you at supper?"
"To be sure—to be sure," responded Reuben, with a cheerfulness which struck Gay as singularly pathetic. "After supper Molly will go over with Patsey and see that