CHAPTER II—A LIGHT SHINING IN DARKNESS
IN the rear of Mrs. Gaston’s place, there stood in the midst of an orchard a log house of two rooms, with hallway between them. There was a mud-thatched wooden chimney at each end, and from the back of the hallway a kitchen extension of the same material with another mud chimney. The house stood in the middle of a ten acre lot, and a woman was busy in the garden with a little girl, planting seed.
“Hurry up Annie, less finish this in time to fix up a fine dinner er greens and turnips an’taters an a chicken. Yer Pappy’ll get home to-day sure. Colonel Gaston’s Nelse come last night. Yer Pappy was in the Colonel’s regiment an’ Nelse said he passed him on the road comin’ with two one-legged soldiers. He ain’t got but one leg, he says. But, Lord, if there’s a piece of him left we’ll praise God an’ be thankful for what we’ve got.”
“Maw, how did he look? I mos’ forgot—’s been so long sence I seed him?” asked the child.
“Look! Honey! He was the handsomest man in Campbell county! He had a tall fine figure, brown curly beard, and the sweetest mouth that was always smilin’ at me, an’ his eyes twinklin’ over somethin’ funny he’d seed or thought about. When he was young ev’ry gal around here was crazy about him. I got him all right, an’ he got me too. Oh me! I can’t help but cry, to think he’s been gone so long. But he’s comin’ to-day! I jes feel it in my bones.”
“Look a yonder, Maw, what a skeer-crow ridin’ er ole hoss!” cried the girl, looking suddenly toward the road.
“Glory to God! It’s Tom!” she shouted, snatching her old faded sun-bonnet off her head and fairly flying across the field to the gate, her cheeks aflame, her blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes wet with tears.
Tom was entering the gate of his modest home in as fine style as possible, seated proudly on a stack of bones that had once been a horse, an old piece of wool on his head that once had been a hat, and a wooden peg fitted into a stump where once was a leg. His face was pale and stained with the red dust of the hill roads, and his beard, now iron grey, and his ragged buttonless uniform were covered with dirt. He was truly a sight to scare crows, if not of interest to buzzards. But to the woman whose swift feet were hurrying to his side, and whose lips were muttering half articulate cries of love, he was the knightliest figure that ever rode in the lists before the assembled beauty of the world.