IS breakfast over, Pete shouldered his grubbing-hoe, an implement shaped like an adze, and made his way through the dewy undergrowth of the wood to an open field an eighth of a mile from his cabin. There he set to work on what was considered by farmers the hardest labor connected with the cultivation of the soil. It consisted of partly digging and partly pulling out by the roots the stout young bushes which infested the neglected old fields.
Pete was hard at work in the corner of a ten-rail worm-fence, when, hearing a sound in the wood, which sloped down from a rocky hill quite near him, he saw a farmer, who lived in the neighborhood, pause suddenly, even in a startled manner, and stare steadily at him.
“Oh!” Pete heard him exclaim; “why, you are Carson Dwight's new man, ain't you, from Darley?”
“Yes, suh, dat me,” the negro replied. “Mr. Hillyer, de overseer fer my boss, set me on dis yer job. I want ter clean it up ter de branch by Sadday.”
“Huh!” The man approached nearer, eying the negro closely from head to foot, his glance resting longer on Pete's hip-pocket than anywhere else. “Huh! I heard down at the store just now that you'd left—throwed up your job, I mean—an' gone clean off.”
“No, I hain't throwed up no job,” the negro said, his slow intelligence groping for the possible cause of such a report. “I been right here since my boss sent me over, en I'm gwine stay lessen he sen' fer me ter tek care o' his hosses in town. I reckon you heard er Marse Carson Dwight's fine drivin' stock.” The farmer pulled his long brown beard, his eyes still on Pete's face; it was as if he had not caught the boy's last remark.
“They said down at the store that you left last night, after—that you went off last night. A man said he seed you at the nigger blow-out on Hilton's farm about one o'clock, and that after it was over you turned towards—I don't know—I'm just tellin' you what they said down at the store.”
“I was at dat shindig,” Pete said. “I walked fum here dar en back ergin.”