He handed Morey a card reading: “Lieutenant Fred Purcell, U. S. Signal Corps, Fort Meyer, Virginia.”
“It will be a favor to me if you’ll take the rod,” insisted Morey.
“The obligation is all mine,” insisted the stranger. “And, if we meet again I hope I can find opportunity to return the favor in some way.”
When the two finally parted company Morey had little reason to suspect how much that statement meant, nor how soon he was to avail himself of Lieutenant Purcell’s kind offices.
A half hour later Morey reached his home and entered the musty, quiet horse lot. There was hardly a breath of air and the sun lay on the place with almost midsummer heat. A few chickens pecked in silence but no other living thing was in sight. Until then the boy had not realized how desolate and run-down was the place where once the activities of a busy plantation centered. There were hardly signs even, of the farm implements that had rotted away for years. The yard seemed abandoned.
With a little lump in his throat the boy hurried forward, his long, ragged trousers gathering new dust and weight as he did do. As he climbed the broken-down fence and got a view of the big, paintless, loose-boarded house beyond he almost sighed. But there at least were flowers and he could hear the hum of bees among the hollyhocks by the garden fence. There he could see Marsh, his old hat well down on his head, bent over his hoe, as the colored man rose at times among the rank weeds. Beyond the garden patch, in the low meadow, he could see, too, old Betty and Jim the mule. Amos was not in sight.
“Old Marsh is getting pretty careless,” said Morey to himself. “There’s a good many things he ought to do around here. Lazy niggers,” he mused.
It did not occur to Morey that he might do some of these things himself. Such had not been the lad’s training. With another sigh he made his way to Marsh Green’s cabin. Never before had it looked so poor and desolate.
“Marsh ought to fix up his old place,” Morey muttered. Then he turned and looked at the big house. The wide shingles, green with moss, were missing in many places. The big chimney, with one side of the top missing, stood like a monument to the departed glories of other days. On the grey-green roof a few chimney bricks lay where they had fallen. But, around the far corner where the gallery showed, the honeysuckle, crawling over the columns and roof, hung a deep green curtain of new fragrance. And, through the crookedly hanging shutters which were the color of dead grass, he saw fresh white curtains.
For the first time in his life the sight of the bricks on the roof annoyed Morey. With a sharp reprimand on his tongue he was about to call to the busy Marsh when a sound fell upon his ear. There was some one in the cabin. Stealing around behind the crumbling shack Morey cautiously approached it and peered through a crack. Amos, crooning to himself, was standing in the middle of the hard, clay floor with Morey’s Richmond trousers held up, before him in his outstretched hands.