The incident passed with the events of the crowded time, but even within the domestic periphery harmony had ceased to reign as of yore. Old Ephraim was a bit sullen, gloomy, did his work with an ill grace, and repudiated all acquaintance with "Brer Rabbit" and "Brer Fox." The soldiers in the neighboring camps—possibly to secure an influence, his alienation from the interest of his quasi-owner, in order to ferret out more of the mystery concerning the Confederate officer, possibly only animated by political fervor, and it may be with a spice of mischief, finding amusement in the old negro's garrulous grotesqueries—had been talking to him of slavery, making the most of his grievances, setting them in order before him, and urging him to rouse himself to the great opportunities of freedom.
"I done make up my mind," he said autocratically, one day in the kitchen. "I gwine realize on my forty acres an' a muel!"
For this substantial bonanza freedom was supposed to confer on each ex-slave.
"Forty acres an' a mule!" the old cook echoed in derisive incredulity and with a scornful black face. "You done realize on de mule—a mule is whut you is, sure! Here's yer mule! An' now you go out an' fotch me a pail of water, else I'll make ye realize on enough good land ter kiver ye! Dat's whut! It'll be six feet—not forty acres,—but it kin do yer job!"
He might have made a fractious politician but for this adverse influence, for he had the variant moods of a mercurial nature, and in gloom showed a morose perversity that could have been easily manipulated into a spurious sense of martyrdom, lacking a tutored ratiocination to enable him to discriminate the facts. But despite his failings, his ignorance, the bewildering changes in his surroundings, never a word concerning his young master escaped his lips, never an inadvertent allusion, a disastrous whisper. He scarcely allowed himself a thought, a speculation.
"Fust thing I know," he reflected warily, "I'll be talkin' ter myself. They always tole me dat walls had ears!"
A day or two of murky weather seemed to penetrate the mental atmosphere as well. It was perhaps the inauguration of the chill interval known as "blackberry winter." Everywhere the great brambles were snowy with bloom, and in the house the "ladies" shivered and clasped their cold elbows in the sleeves of their thin summer dresses till the fenders and fire-dogs were brought out once more, and the flicker of hearthstone flames made cheery the aspect of the library, and dispensed a genial warmth. The air was moist; the trains ran with a dull roar and an undertone of reverberation; there was a collision of boats in the fog on the river, involving loss of life, and one night, the window being up, the sentry in passing called Captain Baynell out on the portico. He said he hesitated to summon the corporal of the guard, lest the sound should pass before the non-commissioned officer could come.
"What sound?" asked Baynell.
"Listen, sir," said the sentry.
The night was dark. There was no moon. The stars now and then glimmering through the mists afforded scant illumination to the earth. The fires of the troops in bivouac about the town shone like thousands of constellations, reflected by the earth. The wind was surging fitfully among the pines. There was a dull iterative beat, rather felt than heard.