But the momentary flush of emotion that the stranger's name had called to 'Zeki'l's face was gone.
"I don't know as I do," he slowly replied, staring at a scrubby cotton-stalk the muzzled ox was making ineffectual attempts to eat.
"I 'lowed may be he might be some kin to you," said Marshall, in a baffled tone.
"I don't know as he is," said 'Zeki'l, still in that slow, dry, non-committal tone, his eyes leaving the cotton-stalk to follow the swift, noiseless flight of a cloud-shadow across a distant hillside. "Morgan isn't an uncommon name, you know."
"That's so," reluctantly admitted Marshall.
"When does Mr. Biggers think o' goin' to Texas?"
"Oh, not until after crops are gathered."
"The other family, isn't to come, then, right away?"
"No; not till fall."
After Marshall had whittled, and gossiped, and gone his way, 'Zeki'l stood a long time with his hands resting on the plow-handles, his brows drawn together in deep thought. Some painful struggle seemed to be going on. The crickets shrilled loudly in the brown sedge bordering a dry ditch, and a vulture sailed majestically round and round above the field, his broad black wings outspread on the quivering air. The cloud-shadows on the river-hills assumed new form, shifted, swept away, and others came in their places, and the vulture had become a mere speck, a floating mote in the upper sunlight, before he turned the patient ox into another furrow, murmuring aloud: