What had befallen that hardened little wretch? Where under the canopy of heaven could he be? I cared little enough for the mere fate of Willie MacDougald; but as a new indication of the extremes to which Matterson and Gleazen would go, his disappearance came at a time that made it singularly ominous.
As I stood, thus pondering, on the rough porch from which I was about to step down and stride into the darkness, where I could make out the figures of negroes of all ages moving restlessly just beyond the light that shone from the windows, I received such a start as seldom has come to me. A hand touched my arm so quietly that for a moment I nearly had an illusion that that miserable little sinner, Willie MacDougald, had returned from the next world to haunt me in this one; a low voice said in my ear, "Stay here with us."
I turned. Just beside me stood the girl whom I had seen in the canoe.
"Stay here," she repeated. "They have gone."
I stammered and tried to speak, and for the first time in my life I found that my tongue was tied.
A step rustled in the grass just under the porch; something touched the floor beside my foot; then a huge black hand brushed gently over my shoe and up my leg, and a black, grotesque face, with rolling eyes and round, slightly parted lips, looked up at me, so close to my hand that unconsciously I snatched it away lest it be bitten.
Startled nearly out of my wits by this amazing apparition, I gave a leap backward and crashed against the wall, at which the absurd negro uttered a shrill whistle of surprise.
The girl tossed her head and stamped her foot, and spoke to the negro in a low voice, which yet was clear enough and sharp enough to send him without a sound into the darkness.
For a moment the lights from the window shone full upon her, and I saw that she was proud as well as comely, and spirited as well as generous. The toss and the stamp showed it; the quick, precise voice confirmed it; and withal there was a twinkle of kindliness in her eyes that would have stormed the heart of a far more sophisticated youth than I. Such spirit is little, if at all, less fascinating to a young man than beauty; and when spirit and beauty go hand in hand, he must be a crabbed old bachelor indeed who can withstand the pair.
Whatever my theories of life, as I had long since revealed them to Arnold Lamont, I was no Stoic; and though at the time I was too excited to be fully aware of it, I thereupon fell, to the crown of my head, in love.