"Heap mo' dan worteh-million juice--"
"That's he. It means come on. Go!" He gathered a brick and trowel and rang them together as if at work. The song answered:
"Aw 'possum pie aw roasted goose--"
The trowel rang on. Without command from her mistress the maid was crouching into the hole. In the noise Anna was trying to press an anxious query upon Hilary, but he dropped brick and tool and snatched her again into his embrace.
"Aw soppin's o' de gravy pan--"
called the song. The maid was through!
"But you, Hilary, my life?" gasped Anna as he forced her to the opening.
"The swamp for me!" he said, again sounding the trowel. "I take this"--the trowel--"and walk out through the hall. Go, my soul's treasure, go!"
Anna, with that art of the day which remains a wonder yet, gathered her crinoline about her feet and twisted through and out upon the ladder. Hilary seized a vanishing hand, kissed it madly, and would have loosed it, but it clung till his limy knuckles went out and down and her lips sealed on them the distant song's fourth line as just then it came:
"De ladies loves de ladies' man!"