Whip-poor-wills accompanied him in his wanderings, Bob Whites, Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting Southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar.
The negroes were not so kind as the birds. From them he suffered humiliation.
More than once he was dubbed "Po' white!" by some haughty ebon creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread.
But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods, to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly soughed him welcome.
After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came to Burgin.
The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth, but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face and manner.
"Have a lif'?" he asked.
Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and bedraggled.
"I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same."
Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his direction over shoulders, saying: