Finally there came a shuffling footfall and the door was opened, but there stood before me no one that I recognized. It was a smallish, oldish, grayish man who opened the door and smiled in query at me.
"I am John Cowles, sir," I said, hesitating. "Yourself I do not seem to know—"
"My name is Halliday, Mr. Cowles," he replied. A flush of humiliation came to my face.
"I should know you. You were my father's creditor."
"Yes, sir, my firm was the holder of certain obligations at the time of your father's death. You have been gone very long without word to us. Meantime, pending any action—"
"You have moved in!"
"I have ventured to take possession, Mr. Cowles. That was as your mother wished. She waived all her rights and surrendered everything, said all the debts must be paid—"
"Of course—"
"And all we could prevail upon her to do was to take up her quarters there in one of the little houses."
He pointed with this euphemism toward our old servants' quarters. So there was my mother, a woman gently reared, tenderly cared for all her life, living in a cabin where once slaves had lived. And I had come back to her, to tell a story such as mine!