After calling loudly and waiting in vain for a reply, I dismounted. Just then the blacksmith came to the door,—a big, low-browed, long-haired fellow, of few words. After examining my horse’s feet, he announced that it would be necessary to replace not only the missing shoe, but also three others.
As he proceeded slowly to work, I saw that there was before me the prospect of a long wait which did not promise to be agreeable, for the man was either surly or stupid, and gave out monosyllabic replies in answer to my questions about the country. A dreary country it was, that through which I was passing,—flat, sandy, impoverished, the virtue having been tilled out of the soil for two hundred years. Now that the old landed proprietors had departed to the cities, the majority of the inhabitants were miserable poor whites and negroes, principally fishermen and oystermen. Here and there one came across a relic of the past,—an old manor-house, ruined or deserted, the property generally of one man, a former overseer, who seemed to own most of the country.
And yet there was a charm of the past over this low-lying land,—a blaze of glory in the west, reflected in the broad river that almost lapped the roots of the huge pine forests that grew along its banks.
As I stood at the door of the smithy, looking eastward, I could see only one exception to this sombre monotony of pines. On the roadside, in the middle of a dense sweep of meadows, entirely isolated, stood a huge oak-tree, the only one of its kind to be seen for miles around.
“That must be a pretty old tree,” I remarked.
“The Dead Oak? Many a hundred years old, I reckon.”
“It doesn’t look dead to me,” I answered; “it has a dense foliage.”
“That’s what they call it,—the Dead Oak. A man hung himself to it three years ago,” said the smith, with some show of animation.
“One of the neighborhood?”
“No; a stranger round here. Nobody ever could find out where he come from,—Washington likely. The niggers say it’s ha’nted.”