And now he had sent for him, sent for him over nearly a thousand miles of prairie, swamp, and forest, past hostile Indian villages and suspicious white men. Jack thought of it and marvelled. Few white men would do so much to keep a pledge to a friend ten years dead!
As he pondered Jack had been pacing slowly homeward. At last he halted on a rustic bridge thrown across a swift-flowing little creek that sang merrily through the woodland. On the hill beyond, at the crest of a velvety shadow-flecked lawn, rose the white-stoned walls of the home where he had been born and bred. Around it stretched acres of field and orchard, vivid with the delicate blossoms of apples and of plums, the pink-white haze of peach, the light green spears of corn, and the darker green of tobacco. Over his head a belted kingfisher screamed, a crimson cardinal flashed like a live coal from tree to tree, a woodpecker drummed at a tree. Below flashed the creek, a singing water pebbled with pearls. Jack did not see nor hear them; arms on rail he stared blankly, pondering.
A voice startled him and he swung round to face his body-servant, Cato, a negro a few years older than himself.
Cato was panting. “Massa Colonel’s home, suh,” he gasped. “An’ he want you, suh. He’s in a pow’ful hurry.”
Jack stared at the boy. “Father home!” he exclaimed, half to himself. “I didn’t expect him for hours.”
“He’s done got home, suh. He ride Black Rover most near to death, suh. Yes, suh! He’s in most pow’ful hurry.”
CHAPTER II
COLONEL TELFAIR was striding excitedly up and down the wide verandah, lashing as he went at the tall riding boots he wore. His plum-colored, long-skirted riding coat, his much-beruffled white shirt, and his tight-fitting breeches were dusty and spattered with dried mud. It needed not the white-lathered horse with drooping head that a negro was leading from the horseblock to show that he had ridden fast and furiously.
From one end of the porch to the other he strode, stopping at each to scan the landscape, then restlessly paced back again. A dozen negroes racing in every direction confirmed the urgent haste that his manner showed.
Abruptly he paused as Jack, followed by Cato, came hurrying up the drive. “Hurry, sir, hurry,” he bawled. “Don’t keep me waiting all day.”