“Is that you, Harbert?” asked the editor.
“Yes, marster.”
“Well, I want you to take Mr. Maxwell here to Mr. Snelson’s.”
“Yasser,” responded the negro.
“Snelson is the foreman of the printing-office,” the editor explained to Joe, “and for the present you are to board with him. I hope he will make things pleasant for you. Goodnight.”
To the lonely lad it seemed a long journey to Mr. Sneison’s—through wide plantation gates, down narrow lanes, along a bit of public road, and then a plunge into the depths of a great wood, where presently a light gleamed through.
“I’ll hail ’em,” said Harbert, and he sent before him into the darkness a musical halloo, whereupon, as promptly as its echo, came a hearty response from the house, with just the faintest touch of the Irish brogue in the voice.
“Ah, and it’s the young man! Jump right down and come in to the warmth of the fire. There’s something hot on the hearth, where it’s waiting you.”
And so Joe Maxwell entered on a new life—a life as different as possible from that which he had left behind in Hillsborough.