Aaron in the Wildwoods

by Joel Chandler Harris

The Black Stallion whinnied again in the friendliest way. "Is anybody ever see de beat er dat!" exclaimed Randall.

Nothing could be done, and so the Black Stallion roamed about the lot at will, and that night when the mules came in from the field they had to be fed and housed under the ginhouse shelter. The White-Haired Master was away from home on business, but the whole plantation knew that he prized Timoleon above all the other horses on the place, and so neither Turin nor Randall would take harsh measures to recapture the horse. They were careful enough, however, to have the high fence strengthened where they found it weak.

This was one of the reasons why Little Crotchet wanted to see Aaron. But there was also another reason. The lad wanted to introduce the runaway to a new friend of his, Mr. Richard Hudspeth, his tutor, who had been employed to come all the way from Massachusetts to take charge of the lad's education, which was already fair for his age. In fact, what Little Crotchet knew about books was astonishing when it is remembered that he never went to school. He had been taught to read and write and cipher by his mother, and this opened the door of his father's library, which was as large as it was well selected.

Mr. Hudspeth had been recommended by an old friend who had served two years in Congress with Mr. Abercrombie, and there was no trouble in coming to an agreement, for Mr. Hudspeth had reasons of his own for desiring to visit the South. He belonged to the anti-slavery society, and was an aggressive abolitionist. He was a fair-skinned young man, with a silk-like yellow beard, active in his movements, and had a voice singularly sweet and well modulated. He talked with great nicety of expression, and had a certain daintiness of manner which, in so far as it suggested femininity, was calculated to give the casual observer a wrong idea of Mr. Hudspeth's disposition and temperament.

He had been installed as Little Crotchet's tutor for more than a week. The lad did not like him at first. His preciseness seemed to smack too much of method and discipline,—the terror of childhood and youth. And there was a queer inflection to his sentences, and his pronunciation had a strange and an unfamiliar twang. But these things soon became familiar to the lad, as Mr. Hudspeth, little by little, won his attention and commanded his interest. The Teacher (for he was emphatically a Teacher in the best sense, and not a Tutor in any sense) saw at the beginning that the dull routine of the text-books would be disastrous here, both to health and spirits. And so he fell back on his own experience, and became himself the mouthpiece of all good books he had ever read, and of all great thoughts that had ever planted themselves in his mind. And he entered with real enthusiasm into all Little Crotchet's thoughts, and drew him out until the soul of the lad would have been no more clearly defined had every detail been painted on canvas and hung on the wall before the Teacher's eyes.

It was this Teacher that Little Crotchet wanted Aaron to see, a fact which, taken by itself, was sufficient evidence that the lad had grown fond of Mr. Hudspeth. Little Crotchet was very cunning about it, too. He invited the Teacher to come to his room after tea, and when Mr. Hudspeth came the lad, lying upon his bed, put the question plumply:—

"Do you want to see my runaway?"

"Your runaway? I don't understand you."

"Don't you know what a runaway is? Why, of course you do. A runaway negro."