With the word "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die away most mournfully.
Twice he heard it sung through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense—had not the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on the floor began to fade, until the room was bathed in shadow. And the song came suddenly to an end and he heard a gentle little "Hush," and then a sigh, and then silence. Slowly he backed away on tiptoe from the door.
He had barely gained the security of the front room—somehow he felt it as security—when he heard the gate screak and, turning suddenly, saw a man dart like a shadow around the side of the house. For a moment he stood in indecision; then he walked softly to the open front door and stood waiting on the threshold. It would be easier to explain his presence there. The sky had grown darker; curling billows of cloud rolling in from the south had chased away the orange glow and their under surface was lit by a pale-green luminance as they came. Shifting wisps of vapour slid twisting and writhing on up ahead, like outriders on reconnaissance. It was singularly still.
Joe stood and waited. Directly he heard a sound, and then steps echoed on the walk around the side of the cabin, and then a man came hurrying around the corner, took one step up on the cabin stair, and then fell back with a low cry: "Fo' de Lawd."
It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely.
"You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very weak and it quickly subsided.
Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black, not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were always dangling and feet that always dragged.
"Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe."
"No. I've been away—down in the city." He paused a moment, considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke.
Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist' Bushrod, he—I was to bring him—he and I wuz to have a little bisnis ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?"