“Suppose I can get your Marster to buy Ezra and make him promise never to sell him as long as he behaves himself; how then? I hate to part with him, but I have servants enough.”
“Meh Marster, dat will settle de ’spute rite ’way; please sell Ezzy to Mars Bedford. I’m sho’ he wudn’ part wid me, an’ Ezzy wild suit him futto handle de hosses.”
Mr. Forrest said he would not take five thousand dollars for Matilda; she was all in all the best servant he ever owned, and after a brief talk not only bought Ezra, but the sheep; so they did not have to come home and carry their tails behind them.
N. B. Forrest soon became attached to Ezra, thought the world of him, and when the Civil War broke out took him as his body servant. Ezra served him faithfully during the war, and when General Forrest disbanded his troops at Gainesville, Ala., May 9th, 1865, General Forrest told Ezra he would give him a home and take care of him as long as he lived. Ezra said, “He wud like once mo’ ter see Mars Matthew an’ Miss Mary an’ den cum back.” Whereupon General Forrest presented him with Pigeon, a mule, and gave him money enough to go home. He rode some hundred and seventy miles to the home of a Mrs. Sanson, where he stayed two weeks, and then took the train from Rome, Ga., for home; and one bright, beautiful morning early in June, timid and lonesome the steamer landed him at Miles River Wharf, Talbot County, Maryland, a mile by water from “Fairlands.”
All faces were strange to him; he knew no one and no one knew him. “The Rest” had been burned during the war, and the new house looked strange. Across the river and opposite “The Rest” was “The Anchorage.” It looked changed; there were no little negroes playing on the lawn. “The Villa” further up the river was almost hidden by the trees that had grown so since he left. Timidly he turned his longing eyes on “Fairlands,” and he saw, a mile away across the river, grand pecan nut, majestic oak, poplar and horse-chestnut trees. He pulled from his pocket a bandanna handkerchief almost big enough to cover a baby’s crib, and said, brushing tears from his eyes, “Dat’s wha Mars Matthew an’ Miss Mary lib. Dat’s ‘Fairlands.’” He asked an old darkey unloading fish and soft crabs from his canoe if, for thirty cents, he would land him at the foot of the “Fairlands” garden. “Git abode; I got meh net sot at de foot ub de gyarden.”
“Ev’ything is so changed,” he said inaudibly, as he took his seat in the bow of the boat. “Mars Bedford tole me I al’ays had uh home wid him,” and he almost regretted leaving his far Southern home.
What a lovely day it was! The air was of caressing softness; the breeze was so light that the sail sometimes jibed, the ripples kissed lightly the sides of the boat that floated lazily along; the balmy June air, the sweet breath of the salt water, all, coupled with Ezra’s fatigue, soothed him and presently he was asleep. His hat fell off beside him, and
Da wuz no wool on de top ub his haid,
In de place wha de wool orter grow.
Here and there on his face were little tufts of beard that looked like tiny grains of popped corn.