The sound of that voice seemed to paralyze Dad Davy.
“Lord A’mighty,” he gasped, “’tis Marse Archy’s voice. Look a heah, is you—is you a ha’nt?”[1]
“A what?”
But without waiting for an answer Dad Davy scurried off for a moment and returned with a tallow candle in a tall silver candlestick. As he appeared, shading the candle with one dusky hand, and rolling two great eyeballs at the newcomer, he was handed a visiting card. This further mystified him, as he had never seen such an implement in his life before; he gazed with a fixed and frightened gaze at the young man before him, and his skin gradually turned the ashy hue that terror produces in a negro.
“Hi, hi,” he spluttered, “you is de spit and image o’ my young Marse, that was kilt long o’ dis lars’ year. And you got he voice. I kin mos’ swar you wuz Marse Archy Corbin, like he wuz fo’ he got married.”
“And my name is Archibald Corbin, too,” said the young man, comprehending the strange resemblance between himself and the dead and gone Archy that had so startled the old negro. He poked his card vigorously into Dad Davy’s hand.
“What I gwine to do with this heah?” asked Dad Davy, eying the card suspiciously.
“Take this card to your master.”
“And if he ax me who k’yard ’tis, what I gwi’ tell him?”
At this the young man burst out into a ringing, full-chested laugh. The negroes were new to him, and ever amusing, and he could not but laugh at Dad Davy’s simplicity. That laugh brought the Colonel out into the hall. He advanced with a low bow, which the stranger returned, and took the card out of Dad Davy’s hand, meanwhile settling his spectacles carefully on his nose, and reading deliberately: