In an iron pot having an ash-covered lid was a piece of corn-pone stamped with the imprint of her fingers, and on some smouldering coals was a skillet containing some curled strips of fried bacon. These things Ann put upon a tin plate, and, holding it in her lap, she began to eat her supper. She was normal and healthy, and therefore her excitement had not subdued her appetite. She ate as with hearty enjoyment, her mind busy with what she had heard and seen.
"Ah, old lady!" she chuckled, "you can laugh fit to split your sides when a loud-mouthed preacher talks in public about burning benches, but your laugh is likely to come back in an echo as hollow as a voice from the grave. If this thing ends as I want it to end, I'll be with you, Jane, as you've managed to be with me all these years."
Till far in the night Ann sat nursing her new treasure and viewing it in all its possible forms, till, growing drowsy, from a long day of fatigue, she undressed herself, and, putting on a dingy gray night-gown, she crept into her big feather-bed.
"It all depends on the girl," was her last reflection before sleep bore her off. "She isn't a bit stronger than I was at about the same age, and I'll bet the Chester power isn't a whit weaker than it was. Well, time will tell."
Late in the night she was waked by a strange dream, and, to throw it out of mind, she rose and walked out into the entry and took a drink of water from the gourd. She had dreamed that Virginia had come to her bedraggled and torn, and had cried on her shoulder, and begged her for help and protection. In the dream she had pressed the girl's tear-wet face against her own and kissed her, and said: "I know what you feel, my child, for I've been through it from end to end; but if the whole world turns against you, come here to me and we'll live together—the young and old of the queerest fate known to womankind."
"Ugh!" Ann ejaculated, with a shudder. "I wonder what's the matter with me." She went back to bed, lay down and drew her feet up under the sheets and shuddered. "To think I'd have a dream of that sort, and about that woman's child!"
[IX]
It was the first Sunday in June. Mrs. Waycroft came along the stony hill-side road that slanted gently down from her house to Ann Boyd's. It was a dry, breezeless morning under an unclouded sun, and but for the earliness of the hour it would have been hot.
"I was just wondering," she said to Ann, whom she found in the back-yard lowering a pail of butter into the well to keep it cool—"I was just wondering if you'd heard that a new man is to preach to-day. He's a Mr. Calhoun, from Marietta, a pretty good talker, I've heard."
"No, I didn't know it," said Ann, as she let the hemp rope slowly glide through her fingers, till, with a soft sound, the pail struck the dark surface of the water forty feet below. "How am I to hear such things? Through the whole week, unless you happen along, I only have a pack of negroes about me, and they have their own meetings and shindigs to go to."