“I ain’ gwine no furder den dis, Miss Effie,” he explained; and then, as the gate swung open, I saw that a young white man had run forward to unfasten it. When the old negro, with a pull at his front lock, had shuffled off in the direction of the sunset, the young man made a bound into the driver’s seat and jerked up the reins.
“Does Uncle Moab live near here?” I inquired. “About a mile up the road, miss. Mr. Blanton gave him the cabin at the fork when he moved away.”
“I wonder why he moved?”
The young man broke into a cheery laugh. “When a darkey once gets a notion in his head, the only way to get it out is with an ax,” he retorted; and a minute later he added: “I reckon you don’t know much about the darkeys up North?”
“Very little,” I conceded, and we drove on in silence.
The road into which we had turned was a narrow private way, very steep and rocky, which led between rotting “worm” fences and neglected fields to a dense avenue of cedars on the brow of the hill. As we went on, I wondered why the fields so near the house should be abandoned. The remains of last year’s harvest still strewed the ragged furrows, and against the skyline on the top of the hill there was a desolate row of corn stubble. Presently, as the carriage jolted over the rocky road, I heard the sound of barking, or, as it seemed to me at that sombre hour, the kind of baying to which hounds give voice on moonlit nights. Then, when we reached the high ground at last, I found that two black and yellow hounds were sitting amid the naked cornstalks and barking at our approach.
“Won’t these fields be planted this year?” I asked in surprise.
“We can’t get any of the darkeys to work here,” replied the driver. “They are too near the house.”
As we came to the brow of the hill the dogs ran to meet us, and then, after a few barks of welcome, turned and padded on noiselessly beside the horses. Between us and the beginning of the cedar avenue there was a clear space of road, and when we reached this the veil over the sunset parted suddenly like a curtain, and a glow, which I can compare to nothing except clouded amber, suffused the horizon and the abandoned cornfields. In this glow I discerned the gigantic shape of an old mulberry tree near the avenue; and the next instant I made out, amid the foliage on the high boughs, the lightly poised figure of a little boy in a blue cotton suit, with a mass of streaming ruddy curls.
“Why, he might slip and fall,” I thought; and the words had scarcely formed themselves in my mind, when the little figure turned sharply, as if in terror, and uttered a cry of alarm.