Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White

by Joel Chandler Harris

Jack Carew rose from his chair, and straightened himself to his full height. He was a new man. Youth and hope rekindled their fires in his eyes. The flush of enthusiasm revisited his face.

"I feel like a new man; I am a new man!" he exclaimed. Then he glanced at the pitiful figure, maundering and sputtering across the way. "I am going home," he went on, "and will put father to bed and nurse him and take care of him just as if—well, just as if I was his mother."

"The Lord'll love you for it, Jack," said Miss Jane, "and so'll Rose Gaither. When ever'thing else happens," she continued, solemnly, "put your trust in the Lord, and don't have no misdoubts of Rose."

The superstition that recognises omens and portents we are apt to laugh at as vulgar, but it has an enduring basis in the fact that no circumstance can be regarded as absolutely trivial. Events apparently the most trifling lead' to the most tremendous results. The wisest of us know not by what process the casual is transformed into the dreadful, nor how accident is twisted into fate.

Jack Carew visited the Inchlys almost daily; yet if he had postponed the visit, the purport of which has been given above, the probability is that he would have been spared much suffering; on the other hand, he would have missed much happiness that came to him at a time of life when he was best prepared to appreciate it. He had determined in his own mind to sell the little land and the few negroes he had saved from the wreck his father's extravagance had made; he had determined to sell these, and slip away with his father to a new life in the West; but his conversation with Miss Jane gave him new hope and courage, so that when Bradley Gaither, a few weeks afterwards, offered to buy the Carew place for two or three times its value, he received a curt and contemptuous message of refusal.

Young Carew was high-strung and sensitive, even as a boy, and events had only served to develop these traits. When he was compelled to leave college to take charge of his father's' affairs, he felt that his name was disgraced for ever. He found, however, that all who had known him were anxious to hold up his hands, and to give him such support as one friend is prepared to give another. If the Pinetuckians were simple-minded, they were also sympathetic, There was something gracious as well as wholesome in their attitude. The men somehow succeeded in impressing him with a vague idea that they had passed through just such troubles in their youth. The idea was encouraging, and Jack Carew made the most of it.

But he never thought of Rose Gaither without a sense of deepest humiliation. He had loved Rose when they were schoolchildren together, but his passion had now reached such proportions that he deeply resented the fact that his school-hoy love had been so careless and shallow a feeling. Now that circumstances had placed her beyond his reach, he regretted that his youthful love experience was not worthier of the place it held in his remembrance. He could forget that Rose Gaither was the daughter of the man to whom he attributed his troubles, but he could never forget that he himself was the son of a man whose weakness had found him out at an age when manhood ought to have made him strong.

Still, Jack Carew made the most of a bad situation. He had the courage, the endurance, and the hopefulness of youth. He faced his perplexities with at least the appearance of good-humour; and if he had his moments of despair, when the skeleton in the jug in the closet paraded in public, Pinetucky never suspected it. The truth is, while Pinetucky was sympathetic and neighbourly, it was not inclined to make a great fuss over those who took a dram too much now and then. Intemperance was an evil, to be sure; but even intemperance had its humorous side in those days, and Pinetucky was apt to look at the humorous side.

One fine morning, however, Pinetuoky awoke to the fact that it was the centre and scene of a decided sensation. Rumour pulled on her bonnet and boots, and went gadding about like mad. Pinetucky was astonished, then perplexed, then distressed, and finally indignant, as became a conservative and moral community. A little after sunrise, Bradley Gaither had galloped up to Squire Inchly's door with the information that two bales of cotton had been stolen from hie place the night before.

The facts, as sot forth by Bradley Gaither, were that he had twelve bales of cotton ready for market. The twelve balei had been loaded upon three, wagons, and the wagons were to start for Augusta at daybreak. At the last moment, when everything was ready, the teams harnessed, and the drivers in their seats, it was discovered that two bales of the cotton were missing. Fortunately, it had rained during the night, and Bradley Gaither had waited until it was light enough to make an investigation. He found that a wagon bad been driven to his packing-screw. He saw, moreover, that but one wagon had passed along the road after the rain, and it was an easy matter to follow the tracks.