The hot, breathless morning followed the storm through which Sandy departed, and fell like a moist blanket over Lost Hollow. Even up at Stoneledge the vapour rose and settled depressingly. Every door and window in the livable part of the house was set wide to any chance stirring of the dead air. Ann Walden in the sitting-room, old Lily Ivy in the kitchen, and the child Cynthia in the dim, shadowy library, in the unlivable part of the house, were listless and indolent. Presently the black woman, having completed the preparations of vegetables for the simple mid-day meal, came to the sitting-room door and contemplated her mistress with respectful eyes. Ivy was fully seventy years old, but she was straight and strong as a woman of fifty and as keen and capable. She had been carefully reared as a house servant in the days of slavery, and she had followed the downward fortunes of the Waldens with dignity and courage worthy a more glorious cause. Her spotless but much patched gown was almost covered by a huge white apron. She wore a kerchief and a turban-like head covering.
"Miss Ann, honey, a leak done sprung in the roof over the west chamber las' night. The rain am permeated through the flo' and marked the ceiling in de libr'y."
Cynthia, lying on the horsehair sofa of the dim room across the hall, looked up and saw the new and ugly spot over her head.
"Well, Ivy, shut the west chamber off from the rest of the house. We have far too much space to care for as it is. When I reconstruct Stoneledge it will be time enough to reopen the disused rooms."
Ivy bowed her head complacently. It had always been the same since the war. One room after another had been shut off until the wide halls dividing the house, the living-room, dining-room, kitchen and three upper bedrooms were all that were left for family use.
"Yes, chile." Then after a pause: "I don' hear how dat wretch, Black Jim, was stricken, by God-a'mighty's justice, on The Way, las' night. He was found plumb dead under a tree whar de lightnin' felled him."
Miss Ann raised her spectacled eyes with something like interest.
"We-all will be safer," she said quietly. "A darky like Jim, who gets a twist in his head about freedom and license, is a mighty dangerous creature."
"Yes, chile, dat's plain truth."
Cynthia held her breath. Sandy had been on The Way—what had God-a'mighty's justice done to him? Surely if any evil had befallen him Ivy would know. By some intangible current the gossip and news of the hills travelled rapidly and more or less accurately.