Whereupon Aaron took the bread, crushed it in his hands, dropped it in an old tin platter, and placed it on the hearth.
“This would taste better, if it had ham gravy on it,” remarked Rambler, after saying “Thanky” with his tail; “yes, a good deal better, but I’ll not be choice.”
When he had finished the bread, he seated himself near the chimney corner and licked his chops carefully.
“You want to know about that trip the Son of Ben Ali made to sell the cotton. But I don’t even know how to begin. My tongue and my tail will be here talking and wagging, and my mind will be off in the woods hunting minks and coons and possums. You know how one thing leads to another. Well, if I get started I’ll get things upside down, as the rabbit does when he tries to run down hill.”
“When I started with the cotton,” suggested Aaron, “you made up your mind to go with me.”
“That’s so,” said Rambler. “I don’t know why. I knew well enough you weren’t going hunting. It was just a notion that seized me. I trotted along sometimes in front of the wagon and sometimes behind it. Before we had gone very far I happened to be in front of the wagon when a rabbit ran across the road. I dashed after it and bumped my head against a fence rail. It hurt so that I sat down by the roadside and waited for the pain to go away. The wagon went by and I concluded to go back home and go to bed in the shuckpen. I started back, but before I had gone far, I heard the clinking of bridle-reins and bits, and presently I saw two men on horseback.
“I stopped until they passed by. And then I saw that it was Old Grizzly and the overseer.”
“Old Grizzly!” cried Buster John. “Who was he?”
“That was the name the negroes had for Mr. Gossett,” Aaron explained.
