After a time Mr. Clem lay down and fell asleep, and I took up a book to keep the silent company of Young Master, and I read page after page without being able to grasp a single idea. How hopeless everything was determined to appear. Abetted by the kindest of men I had stolen into the field of thought, was preparing to become an out-lawed advocate of the law, a sneak-thief behind the bar. A silent partner, indeed, a mysterious counsellor, a dumb orator. As supper-time drew near, I shuddered at the prospect of meeting the doctor's eye. Would he keep his contract with me? An easy matter if what Old Master said was true. But I feared that the old gentleman would weaken when the time came for him to be strong. And should that man be permitted to remain, I believed that he would murder me. Ought I to keep my word with a wolf? I asked myself time and again; and more than once I was on the point of breaking it, but a sense of honor held me back. Why should I feel the fetters of honor chaffing me? I looked up to meet Young Master's eyes. Ah, they, so full of soul and fire, were an inspiration to my struggling manliness. And his affection, though given under cover of dark secrecy, was the most blessed reward I could receive on earth.
In the dining room I waited, standing behind Young Master's chair, looking across at Mr. Clem—waited for the doctor but he did not come. Every sound without gave me a sickening stir, a chicken on the rear veranda, a dog trotting through the hall, the wind-stirred fox-horn tapping against a post just beyond the door. But the man did not come.
CHAPTER XVIII.
My nerves were so wrought upon by the continuous dread of the doctor's coming that by the time the meal was over I was almost in a state of collapse. Young Master's eye noticed my indisposition, and as we turned about in the hall to mount the stairs, he said to me:
"Slip out, Dan, and take a walk in the fresh air, alone. You don't look well." I thanked him and halted, and he passed on without inquiring into the cause of what he must have seen was a pitiable dejection. A thousand well-sifted words could not have shown the delicacy of his nature more fittingly, and my gratitude followed him step by step as he went up the stairs; and when he had reached the landing I stole out of the house.
The brown veil of dusk lay upon the land, but in a hill-side thicket far away a light was shimmering to illumine the early evening festival of the gray fox—the moon was coming up. The air was still and soft, but heavy with the sappy scent from the damp grass land down the creek. On the comb of a cabin, grotesquely outlined in this dun-colored close of day, sat a negro blowing a melancholy reed, and high above him the bull-bats were screaming. In the shrubbery a hord of negro children were playing a counting-out game. I passed the cow-pens; the women were there and I heard the stream of milk spurting hard in the "piggin." My spirits rose out of their nervous lassitude; I felt a strong and almost unnatural sense of exhilaration, and this alarmed me, for we are sometimes afraid to feel an unaccountable buoyancy lest it may foretell a coming fall. I have known Christians who had prayed for sanctity in the sight of the Lord, to tremble at happiness, afraid that it might be a trap set by the devil. I skirted the shore of the creek, crossed the meadow, passed through the woods, entered the grassy lane and stood there with my arms on the fence, looking at the full moon, now high above the trees. And I thought that the foxes must have given over their dancing to scatter about for a night of mischievous prowling. I was on a knoll, and turning about I could see the lights in the cabins and the great house, a hen and her chickens squatted upon the ground, I fancied. The strongest light came from my Young Master's room, and in my mind I could see him sitting at the table with his eyes fastened upon his sheep-bound book. And the self-reproach of an ambitious thought that I was not keeping up with him started me homeward at a bound. But I had not gone far before I was stopped by a voice. A man stepped from the corner of the zig-zag fence. "Hold on!" he said, and the doctor stood before me. The moon was on his face and in the coarse lines that traced his countenance the devil's mockery was legible.
"Where are you going?" he asked, standing with his hands behind him.
"Home," I answered.