Mrs. Tilton was at her churn in the side-gallery. Her slow, downward strokes and easy poise of body seemed wholly apart from the uncanny realm which he occupied alone. She looked up and eyed him curiously over her silver-rimmed spectacles.
“Whar's that nigger Cato?” he demanded.
“I'm afraid he's left for good,” she returned. “He's acted odd all day—refused outright to fetch water to the kitchen. I told 'im I'd report to you, but he stood with the most impudent look on his face, an' wouldn't budge an inch. Then I watched an' saw him go in his cabin. Purty soon he come out with a bundle under his arm, an' started toward town. After he was out o' sight I went to his shack an' found that he had taken all his things—every scrap he could call his own. I reckon he's off for good. Aunt Dilly won't talk much, but she thinks it is all due to the raid the mountain men made on the negroes in town the other night. I know you wasn't in that, Jim, because you was here at home.”
“No, I wasn't in it.”
“I certainly am glad of it.” The woman seemed to churn the words into her butter. “The whole thing has been run in the ground. It is near cotton-pickin' time, an' if the niggers all leave the country help, won't be had. The crops will rot in the field for the lack o' hands to pick it from the bolls.”
Hoag passed on into the house and through the hall into his own chamber. Here the air seemed oppressively warm, the plastered walls giving out heat as from the closed door of a furnace. Throwing off his coat, he sat down before a window. Such a maze and multiplicity of thoughts had never before beset his brain. The incidents of his life, small and large, marched past with the regularity of soldiers. How strange that Sid Trawley's face, ablaze with its new light, should emerge so frequently from amid the others! How odd that he should recall Paul Rundel's notion of giving himself up to the law and suffering the consequences of his supposed crime! And the effect on both men had been astounding. Sid had nothing to fear, and to Paul all good things were falling as naturally as rain from clouds. Then there was Henry, who had suddenly turned about and was making a man of himself.
At this moment a childish voice was heard singing a plantation melody. It was Jack at play on the lawn. Hoag leaned from the window and saw the boy, with hammer and nails, mending a toy wagon. Paul Rundel was entering the gate. Hoag noted the puckered lips of his manager and heard his merry whistle. He saw him pause, tenderly stroke Jack's waving curls, and smile. Who had ever seen a face more thoroughly at peace than this young man's—a smile more spontaneous?
Hoag went to the front door and stood waiting for Paul to approach. The terror within him suggested that the young man might bring fresh news concerning the things he so much dreaded.
“Be careful, Jack,” Paul was advising the boy. “If you start to coast down a steep hill in that thing you might not be able to guide it, and—zip! against a tree or stump you'd go, an' we'd have to fish you out among the splinters.” This was followed by some low-spoken directions from Paul, in which the listener on the veranda caught the words, “friction,” “nuts and bolts,” “lubricating oil,” and “electric motor.”
Then the young man turned, and seeing Hoag he came on. There was a triumphant beam in his eye, an eager flush in his cheeks, as he approached the steps.