initial commit of ebook 17497HEADmain

1 files changed, 2722 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/17497.txt b/17497.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..959cb3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17497.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2722 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ole Mammy's Torment, by Annie Fellows
+Johnston, Illustrated by Mary G. Johnston and Amy M. Sacker
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Ole Mammy's Torment
+
+
+Author: Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2006  [eBook #17497]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Christine D., and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page
+images generously made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+(http://kdl.kyvl.org/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17497-h.htm or 17497-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/9/17497/17497-h/17497-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/9/17497/17497-h.zip)
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through the Electronic
+      Text Collection of the Kentuckiana Digital Library. See
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-247-31689486&view=toc
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+   Italics indicated by _.
+   Bold indicated by =.
+   Small Caps indicated by ALL CAPS.
+   See other notes at end of file
+
+
+
+
+
+OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+Works of
+ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+
+  =The Little Colonel Series=
+
+  (_Trade Mark, Reg. U.S. Pat. Of._)
+
+  Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+
+  The Little Colonel Stories                             $1.50
+    (Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
+    Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and "Two
+    Little Knights of Kentucky.")
+
+  The Little Colonel's House Party                        1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Holidays                           1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Hero                               1.50
+  The Little Colonel at Boarding-School                   1.50
+  The Little Colonel in Arizona                           1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation                 1.50
+  The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor                       1.50
+  The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding                1.50
+  Mary Ware: The Little Colonel's Chum                    1.50
+    The above 10 vols., _boxed_                          15.00
+    _In Preparation_: A new "Little Colonel" Book.
+
+                          *       *       *
+
+  The Little Colonel Good Times Book                      1.50
+
+
+                   =Illustrated Holiday Editions=
+
+  Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in
+                              colour
+
+  The Little Colonel                                     $1.25
+  The Giant Scissors                                      1.25
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                          1.25
+  Big Brother                                             1.25
+
+                        =Cosy Corner Series=
+            Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated
+
+  The Little Colonel                                      $.50
+  The Giant Scissors                                       .50
+  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                           .50
+  Big Brother                                              .50
+  Ole Mammy's Torment                                      .50
+  The Story of Dago                                        .50
+  Cicely                                                   .50
+  Aunt 'Liza's Hero                                        .50
+  The Quilt that Jack Built                                .50
+  Flip's "Islands of Providence"                           .50
+  Mildred's Inheritance                                    .50
+
+                           =Other Books=
+
+  Joel: A Boy of Galilee                                 $1.50
+  In the Desert of Waiting                                 .50
+  The Three Weavers                                        .50
+  Keeping Tryst                                            .50
+  The Legend of the Bleeding Heart                         .50
+  The Rescue of the Princess Winsome                       .50
+  The Jester's Sword                                       .50
+  Asa Holmes                                              1.00
+  Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon)          1.00
+
+                          *       *       *
+
+                       L.C. PAGE & COMPANY
+  53 Beacon Street                               Boston, Mass.
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Bud and Ivy]
+
+
+
+
+OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT
+
+by
+
+ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
+
+Illustrated by Mary G. Johnston and Amy M. Sacker
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's crest]
+
+
+
+Boston
+L. C. Page and Company
+(Incorporated)
+Publishers
+_Copyright, 1897_
+by L. C. Page and Company
+(Incorporated)
+Thirteenth Impression, February, 1907
+Fourteenth Impression, March, 1909
+Fifteenth Impression, August, 1910
+=Colonial Press:=
+Electrotyped and Printed by C.H. Simonds & Co.
+Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+                           TO
+                 TWO TORMENTS WHOM I KNOW
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Illustrations]
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+  BUD AND IVY                         _Frontispiece_
+
+  JOHN JAY                                         2
+
+  "'WOT WE ALL GWINE DO NOW?'"                     7
+
+  MARS' NAT                                       29
+
+  "A GROUP OF PRETTY GIRLS SAT ON THE PORCH"      37
+
+  "FILLED BOTH HIS HANDS"                         41
+
+  UNDER THE APPLE-TREE                            52
+
+  UNCLE BILLY                                     65
+
+  "THE GANDERS HAD CHASED HIM AROUND"             76
+
+  "GEORGE CAME OUT AND LOCKED THE DOOR"           93
+
+  "SAT ALONE BY THE CHURCH STEPS"                111
+
+[Illustration: Cabin]
+
+
+
+
+OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Uncle Billy rested his axe on the log he was chopping, and turned his
+grizzly old head to one side, listening intently. A confusion of sounds
+came from the little cabin across the road. It was a dilapidated negro
+cabin, with its roof awry and the weather-boarding off in great patches;
+still, it was a place of interest to Uncle Billy. His sister lived there
+with three orphan grandchildren.
+
+Leaning heavily on his axe-handle, he thrust out his under lip, and
+rolled his eyes in the direction of the uproar. A broad grin spread over
+his wrinkled black face as he heard the rapid spank of a shingle, the
+scolding tones of an angry voice, and a prolonged howl.
+
+"John Jay an' he gran'mammy 'peah to be havin' a right sma't difference
+of opinion togethah this mawnin'," he chuckled.
+
+He shaded his eyes with his stiff, crooked fingers for a better view. A
+pair of nimble black legs skipped back and forth across the open
+doorway, in a vain attempt to dodge the descending shingle, while a
+clatter of falling tinware followed old Mammy's portly figure, as she
+made awkward but surprising turns in her wrathful circuit of the crowded
+room.
+
+[Illustration: John Jay]
+
+"Ow! I'll be good! I'll be good! Oh, Mammy, don't! You'se a-killin' me!"
+came in a high shriek.
+
+Then there was a sudden dash for the cabin door, and an eight-year-old
+colored boy scurried down the path like a little wild rabbit, as fast as
+his bare feet could carry him. The noise ended as suddenly as it had
+begun; so suddenly, indeed, that the silence seemed intense, although
+the air was full of all the low twitterings and soft spring sounds that
+come with the early days of April.
+
+Uncle Billy stood chuckling over the boy's escape. The situation had
+been made clear to him by the angry exclamations he had just overheard.
+John Jay, left in charge of the weekly washing, flapping on the line,
+had been unfaithful to his trust. A neighbor's goat had taken advantage
+of his absence to chew up a pillowcase and two aprons.
+
+Really, the child was not so much to blame. It was the fault of the
+fish-pond, sparkling below the hill. But old Mammy couldn't understand
+that. She had never been a boy, with the water tempting her to come and
+angle for its shining minnows; with the budding willows beckoning her,
+and the warm winds luring her on. But Uncle Billy understood, and felt
+with a sympathetic tingle in every rheumatic old joint, that it was a
+temptation beyond the strength of any boy living to resist.
+
+His chuckling suddenly stopped as the old woman appeared in the doorway.
+He fell to chopping again with such vigor that the chips flew wildly in
+all directions. He knew from the way that her broad feet slapped along
+the beaten path that she was still angry, and he thought it safest to
+take no notice of her, beyond a cheery "Good mawnin', sis' Sheba."
+
+"Huh! Not much good about it that I can see!" was her gloomy reply.
+Lowering the basket she carried from her head to a fence-post, she began
+the story of her grievances. It was an old story to Uncle Billy,
+somewhat on the order of "The house that Jack built;" for, after telling
+John Jay's latest pranks, she always repeated the long line of misdeeds
+of which he had been guilty since the first day he had found a home
+under her sagging rooftree.
+
+Usually she found a sympathetic listener in Uncle Billy, but this
+morning the only comfort he offered was an old plantation proverb,
+spoken with brotherly frankness.
+
+"Well, sis' Sheba, I 'low it'll be good for you in the long run.
+'Troubles is seasonin'. 'Simmons ain't good twel dey er fros'bit,' you
+know."
+
+He stole a sidelong glance at her from under his bushy eyebrows, to see
+the effect of his remark. She tossed her head defiantly. "I 'low if the
+choice was left to the 'simmon or you eithah, brer Billy, you'd both
+take the greenness an' the puckah befo' the fros'bite every time." Then
+a tone of complaint trembled in her voice.
+
+"I might a needed chastenin' in my youth, I don't 'spute that; but why
+should I now, a trim'lin' on the aidge of the tomb, almos', have to put
+up with that limb of a John Jay? If my poah Ellen knew what a tawment
+her boy is to her ole mammy, I know she couldn't rest easy in her
+grave."
+
+"John Jay, he don't mean to be bad," remarked Uncle Billy soothingly.
+"It's jus' 'cause he's so young an' onthinkin'. An' aftah all, it ain't
+what he _does_. It's mo' like what the white folks say in they church up
+on the hill. 'I have lef' undone the things what I ought to 'uv done.'"
+
+Doubled up out of sight, behind the bushes that lined the roadside
+ditch, John Jay held his breath and listened. When the ringing strokes
+of the axe began again, he ventured to poke out his woolly head until
+the whites of his eyes were visible. Sheba was trudging down the road
+with her basket on her head, to the place where she always washed on
+Tuesdays, she was far enough on her way now to make it safe for him to
+come out of hiding.
+
+The tears had dried on the boy's long curling lashes, but his bare legs
+still smarted from the blows of the shingle, as he climbed slowly out of
+the bushes and started back to the cabin.
+
+"Hey, Bud! Come on, Ivy!" he called cheerfully. Nobody answered. It was
+a part of the programme, whenever John Jay was punished, for the little
+brother and sister to run and hide under the back-door step. There they
+cowered, with covered heads, until the danger was over. Old Sheba had
+never frowned on the four-year-old Bud, or baby Ivy, but they scuttled
+out of sight like frightened mice at the first signal of her gathering
+wrath.
+
+Ivy lay still with her thumb in her mouth, but Bud began solemnly
+crawling out from between the steps. Everything that Bud did seemed
+solemn. Even his smiles were slow-spreading and dignified. Some people
+called him Judge; but John Jay, wise in the negro lore of their
+neighborhood Uncle Remus, called him "Brer Tarrypin" for good reasons of
+his own.
+
+"Wot we all gwine do now?" drawled Bud, with a turtle-like stretch of
+his little round head as he peered through the steps.
+
+[Illustration: 'Wot we all gwine do now?']
+
+John Jay scanned the horizon on all sides, and thoughtfully rubbed his
+ear. His quick eyes saw unlimited possibilities for enjoyment, where
+older sight would have found but a dreary outlook; but older sight is
+always on a strain for the birds in the bush. It is never satisfied with
+the one in the hand. Older sight would have seen only a poor shanty set
+in a patch of weeds and briers, and a narrow path straggling down to
+the dust of the public road. But the outlook was satisfactory to John
+Jay. So was it to the neighbor's goat, standing motionless in the warm
+sunshine, with its eyes cast in the direction of a newly-made garden. So
+was it to the brood of little yellow goslings, waddling after their
+mother. They were out of their shells, and the world was wide.
+
+Added to this same feeling of general contentment with his lot, John Jay
+had the peace that came from the certainty that, no matter what he might
+do, punishment could not possibly overtake him before nightfall. His
+grandmother was always late coming home on Tuesday.
+
+"Wot we all gwine do now?" repeated Bud.
+
+John Jay caught at the low branch of the apple-tree to which the
+clothes-line was tied, and drew himself slowly up. He did not reply
+until he had turned himself over the limb several times, and hung head
+downward by the knees.
+
+"Go snake huntin', I reckon."
+
+"But Mammy said not to take Ivy in the briah-patch again," said Bud
+solemnly.
+
+"That's so," exclaimed John Jay, "an' shingle say so too," he added,
+with a grin, for his legs still smarted. Loosening the grip of his
+knees on the apple-bough, he turned a summersault backward and landed on
+his feet as lightly as a cat.
+
+"Ivy'll go to sleep aftah dinnah," suggested Bud. "She always do." It
+seemed a long time to wait until then, but with the remembrance of his
+last punishment still warm in mind and body, John Jay knew better than
+to take his little sister to the forbidden briar-patch.
+
+"Well, we can dig a lot of fishin' worms," he decided, "an' put 'em in
+those tomato cans undah the ash-hoppah. Then we'll make us a mud oven
+an' roast us some duck aigs. Nobody but me knows where the nest is."
+
+Bud's eyes shone. The prospect was an inviting one.
+
+Most of the morning passed quickly, but the last half-hour was spent in
+impatiently waiting for their dinner. They knew it was spread out under
+a newspaper on the rickety old table, but they had strict orders not to
+touch it until Aunt Susan sounded her signal for Uncle Billy. So they
+sat watching the house across the road.
+
+"Now it's time!" cried Bud excitedly. "I see Aunt Susan goin' around the
+end of the house with her spoon."
+
+An old cross-cut saw hung by one handle from a peg in the stick chimney.
+As she beat upon it now with a long, rusty iron spoon, the din that
+filled the surrounding air was worse than any made by the noisiest gong
+ever beaten before a railroad restaurant. Uncle Billy, hoeing in a
+distant field, gave an answering whoop, and waved his old hat.
+
+The children raced into the house and tore the newspaper from the table.
+Under it were three cold boiled potatoes, a dish of salt, a cup of
+molasses, and a big pone of corn-bread. As head of the family, John Jay
+divided everything but the salt exactly into thirds, and wasted no time
+in ceremonies before beginning. As soon as the last crumb was finished
+he spread an old quilt in front of the fireplace, where the embers,
+though covered deep in ashes, still kept the hearth warm.
+
+No coaxing was needed to induce Ivy to lie down. Even if she had not
+been tired and sleepy she would have obeyed. John Jay's word was law in
+his grandmother's absence. Then he sat down on the doorstep and waited
+for her to go to sleep.
+
+"If she wakes up and gets out on the road while we're gone, won't I
+catch it, though!" he exclaimed to Bud in an undertone.
+
+"Shet the doah," suggested Bud.
+
+"No, she'd sut'n'ly get into some devilmint if she was shet in by
+herself," he answered.
+
+"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!" John
+Jay's roving eyes fell on a broken teacup on the window-sill, that Mammy
+kept as a catch-all for stray buttons and bits of twine. He remembered
+having seen some rusty tacks among the odds and ends. A loose brickbat
+stuck up suggestively from the sunken hearth. The idea had not much
+sooner popped into his head than the deed was done. Bending over
+breathlessly to make sure that the unsuspecting Ivy was asleep, he
+nailed her little pink dress to the floor with a row of rusty tacks.
+Then cautiously replacing the bit of broken brick, he made for the door,
+upsetting Bud in his hasty leave-taking.
+
+Over in the briar-patch, out of sight of the house, two happy little
+darkeys played all the afternoon. They beat the ground with the stout
+clubs they carried. They pried up logs in search of snakes. They
+whooped, they sang, they whistled. They rolled over and over each
+other, giggling as they wrestled, in the sheer delight of being alive on
+such a day. When they finally killed a harmless little chicken-snake, no
+prince of the royal blood, hunting tigers in Indian jungles, could have
+been prouder of his striped trophies than they were of theirs.
+
+Meanwhile Ivy slept peacefully on, one little hand sticking to her
+plump, molasses-smeared cheek, the other holding fast to her headless
+doll. Beside her on the floor lay a tattered picture-book, a big bottle
+half full of red shelled corn, and John Jay's most precious treasure, a
+toy watch that could be endlessly wound up. He had heaped them all
+beside her, hoping they would keep her occupied until his return, in
+case she should waken earlier than usual.
+
+The sun was well on its way to bed when the little hunters shouldered
+their clubs, with a snake dangling from each one, and started for the
+cabin.
+
+"My! I didn't know it was so late!" exclaimed John Jay ruefully, as they
+met a long procession of home-going cows. "Ain't it funny how soon
+sundown gets heah when yo' havin' a good time, and how long it is
+a-comin' when yo' isn't!"
+
+A dusky little figure rose up out of the weeds ahead of them. "Land
+sakes! Ivy Hickman!" exclaimed John Jay, dropping his snake in surprise.
+"How did you get heah?"
+
+Ivy stuck her thumb in her mouth without answering. He took her by the
+shoulder, about to shake a reply from her, when Bud exclaimed, in a
+frightened voice, "Law, I see Mammy comin'. Look! There she is now, in
+front of Uncle Billy's house!"
+
+Throwing away his club, and catching Ivy up in his short arms, John Jay
+staggered up the path leading to the back of the house as fast as such a
+heavy load would allow, leaving Brer Tarrypin far in the rear. Just as
+he sank down at the back door, all out of breath, old Sheba reached the
+front one.
+
+"John Jay," she called, "what you doing', chile?"
+
+"Heah I is, Mammy," he answered. "I'se jus' takin' keer o' the chillun!"
+
+"That's right, honey, I've got somethin' mighty good in my basket fo' we
+all's suppah. Hurry up now, an' tote in some kin'lin' wood."
+
+Never had John Jay sprung to obey as he did then. He shivered when he
+thought of his narrow escape. His arms were piled so full of wood that
+he could scarcely see over them, when he entered the poorly lighted
+little cabin. He stumbled over the bottle of corn and the picture-book.
+Maybe he would not have kicked them aside so gaily had he known that his
+precious watch was lying in the cow-path on the side of the hill where
+Ivy had dropped it.
+
+Mammy was bending over, examining something at her feet. Five ragged
+strips of pink calico lay along the floor, each held fast at one end by
+a rusty tack driven into the puncheons. Ivy had grown tired of her
+bondage, and had tugged and twisted until she got away. The faithful
+tacks had held fast, but the pink calico, grown thin with long wear and
+many washings, tore in ragged strips. Mammy glanced from the floor to
+Ivy's tattered dress, and read the whole story.
+
+Outside, across the road, Uncle Billy leaned over his front gate in the
+deepening twilight, and peacefully puffed at his corn-cob pipe. As the
+smoke curled up he bent his head to listen, as he had done in the early
+morning. The day was ending as it had begun, with the whack of old
+Mammy's shingle, and the noise of John Jay's loud weeping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was a warm night in May. The bright moonlight shone in through the
+chinks of the little cabin, and streamed across Ivy's face, where she
+lay asleep on Mammy's big feather bed. Bud was gently snoring in his
+corner of the trundle-bed below, but John Jay kicked restlessly beside
+him. He could not sleep with the moonlight in his eyes and the frogs
+croaking so mournfully in the pond back of the house. To begin with, it
+was too early to go to bed, and in the second place he wasn't a bit
+sleepy.
+
+Mammy sat on a bench just outside of the door, with her elbows on her
+knees. She was crooning a dismal song softly to herself,--something
+about
+
+  "Mary and Martha in deep distress,
+  A-grievin' ovah brer Laz'rus' death."
+
+It gave him such a creepy sort of feeling that he stuck his fingers in
+his ears to shut out the sound. Thus barricaded, he did not hear slow
+footsteps shuffling up the path; but presently the powerful fumes of a
+rank pipe told of an approaching visitor. He took his fingers from his
+ears and sat up.
+
+Uncle Billy and Aunt Susan had come over to gossip a while. Mammy groped
+her way into the house to drag out the wooden rocker for her
+sister-in-law, while Uncle Billy tilted himself back against the cabin
+in a straight splint-bottomed chair. The usual opening remarks about the
+state of the family health, the weather, and the crops were of very
+little interest to John Jay; indeed he nearly fell asleep while Aunt
+Susan was giving a detailed account of the way she cured the misery in
+her side. However, as soon as they began to discuss neighborhood
+happenings, he was all attention.
+
+The more interested he grew, it seemed to him, the lower they pitched
+their voices. Creeping carefully across the floor, he curled up on his
+pillow just inside the doorway, where the shadows fell heaviest, and
+where he could enjoy every word of the conversation, without straining
+his ears to listen.
+
+"Gawge Chadwick came home yestiddy," announced Uncle Billy.
+
+"Sho now!" exclaimed Mammy. "Not lame Jintsey's boy! You don't mean it!"
+
+"That's the ve'y one," persisted Uncle Billy. "Gawge Washington
+Chadwick. He's a ministah of the gospel now, home from college with a
+Rev'und befo' his name, an' a long-tailed black coat on. He doesn't look
+much like the little pickaninny that b'long to Mars' Nat back in wah
+times."
+
+"And Jintsey's dead, poah thing!" exclaimed Aunt Susan. "What a day it
+would have been for her, if she could have lived to see her boy in the
+pulpit!"
+
+Conversation never kept on a straight road when these three were
+together. It was continually turning back by countless by-paths to the
+old slavery days. The rule of their master, Nat Chadwick, had been an
+easy one. There had always been plenty in the smoke-house and
+contentment in the quarters. These simple old souls, while rejoicing in
+their freedom, often looked tenderly back to the flesh-pots of their
+early Egypt.
+
+John Jay had heard these reminiscences dozens of times. He knew just
+what was coming next, when Uncle Billy began telling about the day that
+young Mars' Nat was christened. Mis' Alice gave a silver cup to
+Jintsey's baby, George Washington, because he was born on the same day
+as his little Mars' Nat. John Jay knew the whole family history. He was
+very proud of these people of gentle birth and breeding, whom Sheba
+spoke of as "ou' family." One by one they had been carried to the little
+Episcopal churchyard on the hill, until only one remained. The great
+estate had passed into the hands of strangers. Only to Billy and Susan
+and Sheba, faithful even unto death, was it still surrounded by the halo
+of its old-time grandeur.
+
+Naturally, young Nat Chadwick, the last of the line, had fallen heir to
+all the love and respect with which they cherished any who bore the
+family name. To other people he was a luckless sort of fellow, who had
+sown his wild oats early, and met disappointment at every turn. It was
+passed about, too, that there was a romance in his life which had
+changed and embittered it. Certain it is, he suddenly seemed to lose all
+ambition and energy. Instead of making the brilliant lawyer his friends
+expected, he had come down at last to be the keeper of the toll-gate on
+a country turnpike.
+
+Lying on his pillow in the dense shadow, John Jay looked out into the
+white moonlight, and listened to the old story told all over again. But
+this time there was added the history of Jintsey's boy, who seemed to
+have been born with the ambition hot in his heart to win an education.
+He had done it. There was a quiver of pride in Uncle Billy's voice as he
+told how the boy had outstripped his young master in the long race; but
+there was a loyal and tender undercurrent of excuse for the unfortunate
+heir running through all his talk.
+
+It had taken twenty years of struggle and work for the little black boy
+to realize his hopes. He had grown to be a grave man of thirty-three
+before it was accomplished. Now he had come home from a Northern college
+with his diploma and his degree.
+
+"He have fought a good fight," said Uncle Billy in conclusion, finishing
+as usual with a scriptural quotation. "He have fought a good fight, and
+he have finished his co'se, but"--here his voice sank almost to a
+whisper--"he have come home to die."
+
+A chill seemed to creep all over John Jay's warm little body. He raised
+his head from the pillow to listen still more carefully.
+
+"Yes, they say he got the gallopin' consumption while he was up Nawth,
+shovellin' snow an' such work, an' studyin' nights in a room 'thout no
+fiah. He took ole Mars's name an' he have brought honah upon it, but
+what good is it goin' to do him? Tell me that. For when the leaves go in
+the autumn time, then Jintsey's boy must go too."
+
+"Where's he stayin' at now?" demanded Mammy sharply, although she drew
+the corner of her apron across her eyes.
+
+"He's down to Mars' Nat's at the toll-gate cottage. 'Peahs like it's the
+natch'el place for him to be. Neithah of 'em's got anybody else, and
+it's kind a like old times when they was chillun, play in' round the big
+house togethah. I stopped in to see him yestiddy. The cup Mis' Alice
+gave him was a-settin' on the mantel, an' Mars' Nat was stewin' up some
+sawt of cough tonic for him. The white folks up Nawth must a thought a
+heap of him. He'd just got a lettah from one of the college professahs
+'quirin' bout his health. Mars' Nat read out what was on the back of it:
+'Rev'und Gawge W. Chadwick, an' some lettahs on the end that I kain't
+remembah. An' he said, laughin'-like, sezee, 'well, Uncle Billy, you'd
+nevah take that as meanin' Jintsey's boy, would you now? It's a mighty
+fine soundin' title,' sezee. Gawge gave a little moanful sawt of smile,
+same as to say, well, aftah all, it wasn't wuth what it cost him. An' it
+wasn't! No, it wasn't," repeated Uncle Billy, solemnly shaking the ashes
+from his pipe. "What's the good of a head full of book learnin' with a
+poah puny body that kaint tote it around?"
+
+Somehow, Uncle Billy's solemn declaration, "he have fought a good
+fight," associated this colored preacher, in John Jay's simple little
+mind, with soldiers and fierce battles and a great victory. He lay back
+on his pillow, wishing they would go on talking about this man who had
+suddenly become such a hero in his boyish eyes. But their talk gradually
+drifted to the details of Mrs. Watson's last illness. He had heard them
+so many times that he soon felt his eyelids slowly closing. Then he
+dozed for a few minutes, awakening with a start. They had gotten as far
+as the funeral now, and were discussing the sermon. They would soon be
+commenting on the way that each member of the family "took her death."
+That was so much more interesting, he thought he would just close his
+eyes again for a moment, until they came to that.
+
+Their voices murmured on in a pleasing flow; his head sunk lower on the
+pillow, and his breathing was a little louder. Then his hand dropped
+down at his side. He was sound asleep just when Aunt Susan was about to
+begin one of her most thrilling ghost stories.
+
+In the midst of an account of "a ha'nt that walked the graveyard every
+thirteenth Friday in the year," John Jay turned over in his sleep with a
+little snort. Aunt Susan nearly jumped out of her chair, and Uncle Billy
+dropped his pipe. There was a moment of frightened silence till Mammy
+said, "It must have been Bud, I reckon. John Jay is allus a-knockin' him
+in his sleep an' makin' him holler out. Go on, sis' Susan."
+
+The moon had travelled well across the sky when Mammy's guests said good
+night. She lingered outside after they had gone, to look far down the
+road, where a single point of light, shining through the trees, marked
+the toll-gate. It would not be so lonely for Mars' Nat, now that George
+had come home. She recalled the laughing face of the little black boy as
+she had known it long ago, and tried to call up in her imagination a
+picture of the man that Uncle Billy had described. Visions of the old
+days rose before her. As she stood there with her hands wrapped in her
+apron, it was not the moon-flooded night she looked into, but the warm,
+living daylight of a golden past.
+
+At last, with a sigh, she turned to take the chairs into the house.
+Lifting the big rocker high in front of her, she stepped over the
+threshold and started to shuffle her way along to the candle shelf. The
+chair came down in the middle of the floor with a sudden bang, as she
+caught her foot in John Jay's pillow and sprawled across him.
+
+The boy's first waking thought was that there had been an earthquake and
+that the cabin had caved in. He never could rightly remember the order
+of events that followed, but he had a confused memory of a shriek, a
+scratching of matches, and the glimmer of a candle that made him sit up
+and blink his eyes. Then something struck him, first on one ear, then
+the other, cuffing him soundly. He was too dazed to know why. Some blind
+instinct helped him to find the bed and burrow down under the clothes,
+where he lay trying to think what possible fault of his could have
+raised such a cyclone about his ears. He was too deep under the
+bedclothes to hear Mammy's grumbling remarks about his "tawmentin' ways"
+as she rubbed her skinned elbow with tallow from the candle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Standing in the back door of Sheba's cabin one could see the red gables
+of the old Chadwick house, rising above the dark pine-trees that
+surrounded it. A wealthy city family by the name of Haven owned it now.
+It was open only during the summer months. The roses that Mistress Alice
+had set out with her own white hands years ago climbed all over the
+front of the house, twining around its tall pillars, and hanging down in
+festoons from its stately eaves. Cuttings from the same hardy plant had
+been trained along the fences, around the tree-trunks and over
+trellises, until the place had come to be known all around the country
+as "Rosehaven."
+
+Sheba always had steady employment when the place was open, for the
+young ladies of the family kept her flat-irons busy with their endless
+tucks and ruffles. She found a good market, too, for all the eggs she
+could induce her buff cochins to lay, and all the berries that she
+could make John Jay pick.
+
+This bright June morning she stood in the door with a basket of fresh
+eggs in her hand, looking anxiously across the fields to the gables of
+Rosehaven, and grumbling to herself.
+
+"Heah I done promise Miss Hallie these fresh aigs for her bufday cake,
+an' no way to get 'em to her. I'll nevah get all these clothes done up
+by night if I stop my i'onin', an' John Jay's done lit out again! little
+black rascal!" She lifted up her voice in another wavering call. "John
+Ja-a-y!" The beech woods opposite threw back the echo of her voice,
+sweet and clear,--"Ja-a-y!"
+
+"Heah I come, Mammy!" cried a panting voice. "I was jus' turnin' the
+grine-stone for Uncle Billy."
+
+She looked at him suspiciously an instant, then handed him the basket.
+"Take these aigs ovah to Miss Hallie," she ordered, "and mind you be
+quickah'n you was last time, or they might hatch befo' you get there."
+
+"Law now, Mammy!" said John Jay, with a grin. He snatched at the basket,
+impatient to be off, for while standing before her he had kept
+scratching his right shoulder with his left hand; not that there was any
+need to do so, but it gave him an excuse for holding together the jagged
+edges of a great tear in his new shirt. He was afraid it might be
+discovered before he could get away.
+
+It was one of John Jay's peculiarities that in going on an errand he
+always chose the most roundabout route. Now, instead of following the
+narrow footpath that made a short cut through the cool beech woods, he
+went half a mile out of his way, along the sunny turnpike.
+
+[Illustration: Mars' Nat]
+
+Mars' Nat stood outside his kitchen window, with his hands in his
+pockets, giving orders to the colored boy within, who did his bachelor
+housekeeping. Usually he had a joking word for old Sheba's grandson, but
+this morning he took no notice of the little fellow loitering by with
+such an appealing look on his face. John Jay had come past the toll-gate
+with a hope of seeing the "Rev'und Gawge," as he called him. It had been
+three weeks since the man had come home, and in that time John Jay's
+interest in him had grown into a sort of hero-worship. There had been a
+great deal of talk about him among the ignorant colored people.
+Wonderful stories were afloat of his experiences at the North, of his
+power as a preacher, and of the plans he had made to help his people. He
+would have been surprised could he have known how he was discussed, or
+how the stories grew as they travelled.
+
+Those who had any claim whatever to a former acquaintance stopped at the
+cottage to see him. Their interest and the little offerings of fruit or
+flowers, which they often made their excuse for coming, touched him
+greatly. To all who came he spoke freely of his hopes. Realizing that he
+might have but the one opportunity, he talked as only a man can talk who
+feels the responsibilities of a lifetime crowded into one short hour.
+One by one they came and listened, and went away with a new expression
+on their faces, and a new ambition in their hearts.
+
+To all these people he was "Brothah Chadwick;" to the three old slaves
+bound to him by ties almost as strong as those of kinship, he could
+never be other than Jintsey's boy; but to two persons he was known as
+the "Rev'und Gawge." Mars' Nat took to calling him that in a joking
+way, but John Jay gave him the title almost with awe. It seemed to set
+him apart in the child's reverent affection as one who had come up out
+of great tribulation to highest honor. Old Sheba had not cuffed her
+grandson to church every week in vain. He had heard a great deal about
+white robes and palms of victory and "him that overcometh." By some
+twist of his simple little brain the term Reverend had come to mean all
+that to him, and much more. It meant not only some one set apart in a
+priestly way, but some one who was just slipping down into the
+mysterious valley of the shadow, with the shining of the New Jerusalem
+upon his face.
+
+As long as the cottage was in sight John Jay kept rolling his eyes
+backward as he trudged along in the dust; but Mars' Nat was the only one
+in view. Twice he stumbled and almost spilled the eggs. A little farther
+along he concluded that he was tired enough to rest a while. So he sat
+down on a log in a shady fence corner, and took a green apple from his
+pocket. He rolled it around in his hands and over his face, enjoying its
+tempting odor before he stuck his little white teeth into it. The first
+bite was so sour that it drew his face all up into a pucker and made
+his eyes water. He raised his hand to throw it away, but paused with his
+arm in the air to listen. Somebody was playing on the organ in the
+church a few rods up the hill.
+
+It was a quaint little stone church, all overgrown with ivy, that the
+Chadwicks had built generations ago. The high arched door was never
+opened of late years, except at long intervals, when some one came out
+from the city to hold services. But the side door was certainly ajar
+now, for the saddest music that John Jay had ever heard in all his life
+came trembling out on the warm summer air.
+
+Forgetting all about his errand, he scrambled through the fence and up
+the gently rising knoll. His bare feet made no noise as he tiptoed up
+the steps and stood peering through the open door. It was dim and cool
+inside, with only the light that could sift through the violet and amber
+of the stained glass windows; but in one, the big one at the end, was
+the figure of a snowy dove, with outstretched wings. Through this
+silvery pane a long slanting ray of light, dazzling in its white
+radiance, streamed across the keys of the organ and the man who played
+them,--the Reverend George.
+
+It threw a strange light on the upturned face,--a face black as ebony,
+worn with suffering, but showing in every feature the refining touch of
+a noble spirit. His mournful eyes seemed looking into another world,
+while his fingers wandered over the keys with the musical instinct of
+his race.
+
+John Jay slipped inside and crouched down behind a tall pew. The only
+music that he had been accustomed to was the kind that Uncle Billy
+scraped from his fiddle and plunked on his banjo. It was the gay,
+rollicking kind, that put his feet to jigging and every muscle in his
+body quivering in time. This made him want to cry; yet it was so sweet
+and deep and tender as it went rolling softly down the aisles, that he
+forgot all about the eggs and Miss Hallie. He forgot that he was John
+Jay. All he thought of was that upturned face with the strange unearthly
+light in its dark eyes, and the melody that swept over him.
+
+A spell of coughing seized the rapt musician. After it had passed, he
+lay forward on the organ a while, with his head bowed on his arms. Then
+he straightened himself up wearily, and began pushing the stops back
+into their places.
+
+The silence brought John Jay to his senses. He crawled along the aisle
+and out of the door, blinkling like an owl as he came into the blinding
+sunshine. Many experiences had convinced him that he was born under an
+unlucky star. When he went leaping down the hill to the log where he had
+left his basket, it was with the sickening certainty that some evil had
+befallen the eggs. He was afraid to look for fear of finding a mass of
+broken shells strewn over the ground. It was with a feeling of surprise
+that he saw the white ends of the top layer of eggs peeping out of their
+bed of bran, just as he had left them. With a sigh of relief he picked
+up the basket; then whistling gaily as a mockingbird, he set out once
+more in the direction of Rosehaven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Something unusual was going on at Rosehaven. Awnings were spread over
+the lawn, gay colored lanterns were strung all about the grounds, and a
+stage for outdoor tableaux had been built near the house, where a dark
+clump of cedars served as a background.
+
+John Jay had orders to take the eggs directly to the cook, but his
+curiosity kept him standing open-mouthed on the lawn, watching the
+hanging of the lanterns.
+
+[Illustration: A group of pretty Girls sat on the porch]
+
+A group of pretty girls sat on the porch steps, between the white
+rose-twined pillars. One of them was tying up the cue of an
+old-fashioned wig with a black ribbon; another was mending the gold lace
+on a velvet coat, and the others were busy with the various costumes
+which they were to wear in the tableaux. Now and then a gay trill or a
+snatch from some popular song floated out above their laughing chatter.
+Suddenly one of them looked up and saw John Jay standing in the
+gravelled drive.
+
+"Look, girls!" she exclaimed. "Here's the very thing we want for our old
+Virginia days! Hallie looks like a picture in that lovely brocaded satin
+of her grandmother's, and Raleigh Stanford does the cavalier to
+perfection in that farewell scene. All it lacks is some little Jim Crow
+to hold his horse, and there is one now. Oh, Hallie! come out here a
+minute!"
+
+In response to her call, a beautiful dark-haired girl came out on the
+porch from the hall, carrying a pasteboard shield which she had just
+finished covering with tinfoil. John Jay's mouth opened still wider as
+it flashed a dazzling light into his eyes. He thought it was silver.
+
+"Isn't it fine?" she asked, waltzing around with it on her arm for them
+to admire the effect. Then she dropped down on the step above them. "Was
+it you who called me, Sally Lou?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," answered the girl, who had finished tying up the cue, and now had
+the wig pulled coquettishly over her blonde curls. "Look at the little
+darkey over there. I was just telling the girls that he is all that is
+needed to complete your cavalier tableau. Call him over here and tell
+him that he must come to-night." Just then the boy turned and started on
+a trot to the kitchen. "Why, it's John Jay!" exclaimed Hallie. "Old Lucy
+has been scolding about those eggs for the last two hours. His
+grandmother promised to send them over immediately after breakfast. I'll
+go down and see what kept him so long. He is always getting into
+trouble."
+
+"Make him come up here," begged Sally Lou, "and get him to talk for us.
+I know he'll be lots of fun, for he has such a bright face."
+
+In a few moments the laughing young hostess was back among her guests,
+with John Jay following her. "Don't you want to see all my birthday
+presents?" she asked, leading the way into the library and beckoning the
+girls to follow. "See! I found this mandolin in my chair when I went to
+the breakfast-table this morning, and this watch was under my napkin.
+This tennis-racquet was on the piano when I came up-stairs, and I've
+been finding books and things all morning." She opened a great box of
+chocolate bonbons as she spoke, and filled both his hands.
+
+[Illustration: Filled both his hands]
+
+He looked about him with round, astonished eyes, but never said a word
+in answer to the eager questions of the girls, beyond a bashful "yessa"
+or "no'm."
+
+The arrival of Raleigh Stanford and one of his friends, on their wheels,
+put an end to the girls' interest in John Jay. He was dismissed with a
+message to Sheba that sent him flying home through the woods like an
+excited little whirlwind. The lid of the basket flopped up and down, in
+time to the motion of his scampering feet. At the foot of the hill he
+began calling "Mammy!" and kept it up until he reached the door. By that
+time, he was so out of breath that he could only gasp his message. Sheba
+was expected to be at Rosehaven at seven o'clock, and John Jay was to
+take part in the performance on the lawn.
+
+It took a great deal of cross-questioning before Mammy fully understood
+the arrangement. She could readily see that her services might be
+desired in the kitchen, but it puzzled her to know what anybody could
+want of John Jay. She shook her head a great many times before she
+finally promised that he might go.
+
+Bud had passed a very dull morning without his adventurous brother. Now
+he came up with a bit of rope with which to play horse. But John Jay was
+looking down on such sports at present.
+
+"Aw, go way, boy," he said, with a lofty air. "I ain't no hawse. I'se
+goin' to a buthday-pa'ty to-night. Miss Hallie done give me an
+invite--me an' Mammy."
+
+"Whose goin' to stay with me an' Ivy?" asked Bud, anxiously.
+
+"Aunt Susan, I reckon," answered John Jay. "Mammy tole me to go ask her.
+Come along with me, an' I'll tell you what all Miss Hallie got for her
+buthday. I reckon she had mos' a thousand presents, an' a box of candy
+half as big as Ivy."
+
+Bud opened his eyes in amazement.
+
+"Deed she did," persisted John Jay, enjoying the sensation he was
+making. "She gave me some, and I saved a piece for you." After much
+searching through his pockets, John Jay handed out a big chocolate cream
+that had been mashed flat. Bud ate it gratefully as they walked on, and
+wiped his lips with his little red tongue, longing for more.
+
+After supper, as Mammy and John Jay went down the narrow meadow path in
+Indian file, he ventured a question that he had pondered all day.
+"Mammy, does we all have buthdays same as white folks?"
+
+"Of co'se," answered the old woman, tramping on ahead with her skirts
+held high out of the dewy grass.
+
+"When's yoah's?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+"Well," she began reflectively, not willing to acknowledge that she had
+never known the exact date, "I'm nevah ve'y p'tick'lah 'bout its
+obsa'vation. It's on a Monday, long in early garden-makin' time."
+
+They had come to a little brook, bridged by a wide, hewed log. When they
+had crossed in careful silence, John Jay began again. "Mammy, when's my
+buthday?"
+
+"I kaint tell 'zactly, honey," she answered, "'twel I adds it up." As
+she began counting on her fingers, her skirts slipped lower and lower
+from her grasp, until they brushed the dew of the wayside weeds.
+
+"Yes, that's it," she announced at last. "Miss Hallie is nineteen this
+Satiddy, and you'll be nine next Satiddy. A week from to-day is yoah
+buthday. Pity it hadn't a-happened to be the same day, then maybe Mis'
+Haven mought a give you somethin' like Mis' Alice give Jintsey's boy."
+
+John Jay had that same thought all the rest of the way to Rosehaven,
+but after they entered the brilliantly illuminated grounds he seemed to
+stop thinking altogether. It was a sight beyond all that his wildest
+imaginings had pictured. He did not recognize the place. All the
+lanterns were lighted now, hanging like strings of stars around the
+porches, and from tree to tree. Violins played softly, somewhere out of
+sight, and everywhere on the night air was the breath of myriads of
+roses. Handsomely dressed people passed in and out of the house, and
+across the lawn. The light, the music, and the perfume made the place
+seem enchanted ground to the bewildered little John Jay, and when he
+reached the illuminated fountain just in front of the house, he clung to
+Mammy's skirts as if he had suddenly found himself in some strange Eden,
+and was frightened by its unearthly beauty.
+
+The fountain into which, only that morning, he had thrust his hot little
+face for a drink, now seemed bewitched. It was no longer a flow of
+sparkling water, but of splashing rainbows. From palest green to ruby
+red, from amethyst to amber it paled and deepened and glowed.
+
+All the evening he moved about like one in a dream. The tableaux with
+their shifting scenes of knights and ladies and marble statuary were
+burned on his memory as heavenly visions. He knew nothing of the tinsel
+and flour and red lights which produced the effect. He stood about as
+Miss Hallie told him: he held a horse in one tableau, and posed as a
+bronze statue in another. Then he went back to the fountain, and sat
+dreamily watching it, while the violins played again,--in the long
+parlors this time, where the dancing had begun.
+
+Raleigh Stanford, still in his cavalier costume, and with Miss Sally Lou
+on his arm, spied him as they passed by. "Oh, there's that funny little
+fellow that was here this morning!" she said. "We tried to make him
+talk, but he just kept his head on one side, and was too embarrassed to
+say anything."
+
+"Hey, Sambo," called the young man suddenly in his ear. "What do you
+know?"
+
+John Jay gave a start, and looked up at the amused faces above him. He
+took the question seriously, and thought he must really tell what he
+knew; but just at that moment he could remember only one thing in all
+the wide world. Every other bit of information seemed to desert him. So
+he stammered, "I--I know M--Miss Hallie, she's nineteen this Satiddy,
+an' I'll be nine next Satiddy."
+
+Miss Sally Lou laughed so gaily that her young cavalier made another
+effort to please her.
+
+"Is that so!" he exclaimed, as if surprised. "It's a mighty lucky thing
+you told me that, now, or I never would have thought to bring you
+anything. You didn't know that I am a sort of birthday Santa Claus, did
+you? Just look out for me next Saturday. If I'm not there by
+breakfast-time, wait till noon, and if I don't get there by that time
+it'll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody'll be prancing
+along about sundown."
+
+"Oh, come along, Raleigh," said Miss Sally Lou, moving off toward the
+house. "You're such a tease."
+
+John Jay, sitting beside that wonderful fountain and surrounded by so
+many strange, beautiful things, did not think it at all queer that such
+an unheard-of person as a birthday Santa Claus should suddenly step out
+from the midst of the enchantment and speak to him.
+
+"A blue velvet cape on," he said to himself, thinking how he should
+describe him to Bud. "An' gole buckles on his shoes, an' a sword on,
+an' a long white feathah in his hat. Cricky! An' it was his hawse I done
+held! Maybe it will be somethin' mighty fine what he's goin' to bring
+me, 'cause I did that!"
+
+Later he found his way to the kitchen, where Sheba was washing dishes.
+The cook gave him a plate of ice-cream and some scraps of cake. She was
+telling Sheba how beautiful Miss Hallie's birthday cake looked at
+dinner, with its nineteen little wax candles all aflame. That was the
+last thing John Jay remembered, until some one shook him, and told him
+it was time to go home. He had fallen asleep with a spoon in his hand.
+
+Mammy was afraid to take the short cut through the woods after dark, so
+she led him away round by the toll-gate. He was so sleepy that he
+staggered up against her every few steps, and he would have dropped down
+on the first log he came to, if she had not kept tight hold of his hand
+all the way.
+
+When they reached Uncle Billy's house, he had just gone out to draw a
+pitcher of water. Mammy stopped to get a drink, and John Jay leaned up
+against the well-shed. The rumbling of the windlass and the fall of the
+bucket against the water below aroused him somewhat, and by the time he
+had swallowed half a gourdful of the cold well-water he was wide awake.
+
+Uncle Billy went up to the cabin with them in order to hear an account
+of the party, and to walk back with Aunt Susan. John Jay fell behind. He
+could not remember ever having been out so late at night before, and he
+had never seen the sky so full of stars. They made him think of
+something that Aunt Susan had told him. She said that if he counted
+seven stars for seven nights, at the same time repeating a charm which
+she taught him, and making a wish, he'd certainly get what he wanted at
+the end of the week.
+
+Now he stopped still in the path, and slowly pointing to each star with
+his little black forefinger, as he counted them, solemnly repeated the
+charm:
+
+  "Star-light, star bright,
+  Seventh star I've seen to-night;
+  I wish I may and I wish I might
+  Have the wish come true I wish to-night."
+
+"Come on in, chile! What you gawkin' at?" called Mammy from the doorway.
+John Jay made no answer. It would have broken the charm to have spoken
+again before going to sleep. He hurried into the house, glad that Mammy
+was so occupied with her company that she could pay no attention to him.
+She stood in the door with them so long that John Jay was in bed by the
+time she came in. Although he pretended to be asleep, inwardly he was in
+a quiver of excitement.
+
+"I'll count 'em every night," he thought. The wish that burned in his
+little heart was a very earnest one, fraught with hopes for his coming
+birthday.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Late hours did not agree with John Jay. Next morning he felt too tired
+to stir. He groaned when he remembered that it was Sunday, for he
+thought of the long, hot walk down to Brier Crook church. To his great
+surprise, Mammy did not insist on his going with her: she had been
+offered a seat in a neighbor's spring-wagon, and there was no room for
+him.
+
+So he spent a long, lazy morning, stretched out in the shade of the
+apple-tree. A smell of clover and ripening orchards filled the heated
+air. The hens clucked around drowsily with drooping wings. A warm breeze
+stirred the grasses where he lay.
+
+Ivy dug in the dirt with a broken spoon, while Bud kicked up his heels
+beside John Jay, listening to a marvellous account of Miss Hallie's
+party. It lost nothing in the telling. For years after, John Jay looked
+back upon that night as a John of Patmos might have looked, remembering
+some vision of the opened heavens. The lights, the music, the
+white-robed figures, and above all, that wonderful fountain looking as
+if it must have sprung from some "sea of glass mingled with fire," did
+not belong to the earth with which he was acquainted. He repeated some
+part of that recollection to Bud every day for a week, always ending
+with the sentence uppermost in his thought: "And next Satiddy _I_ has a
+buthday."
+
+[Illustration: Under the apple-tree]
+
+Of course he knew that his celebration could be nothing like Miss
+Hallie's; but he had a vague idea that something would happen to make
+the day unusual and delightful. Every night after he had gone to bed,
+and when Mammy was drowsing on the doorstep, he raised himself to his
+knees, and looked through a wide hole in the wall where the chinking had
+dropped out from between the logs. Through this he could see a strip of
+sky studded with twinkling stars. One by one he pointed out the magic
+seven, repeating the charm and whispering the wish.
+
+It was a long week, because he was in such a hurry for it to go by. But
+Friday night came at last; and, as he counted the stars for the seventh
+time, the little flutter of excitement in his veins made them seem to
+dance before his eyes.
+
+Early Saturday morning he was awakened by Mammy's stirring around
+outside among the chickens, and instantly he remembered that the
+long-looked-for day had come. Somehow, a feeling of expectancy made it
+seem different from other days. He wanted it to last just as long as
+possible, so he lay there thinking about it, and wondering what would
+happen first.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, Mammy sent him to the spring for water. He
+was gone some time, for he had a faint hope that the birthday Santa
+Claus whom he had met at Miss Hallie's party might come early, and he
+spent several minutes looking down the road.
+
+Breakfast was ready when he reached the house, and he set the pail down
+in such a hurry that some of the water slopped out on his bare toes. His
+wistful eyes scanned the table quickly. There was a better breakfast
+than usual--bacon and eggs this morning. There was no napkin on the
+table under which some gift might lie in hiding, but remembering Miss
+Hallie's other experiences, he pulled out his chair. A little shade of
+disappointment crept into his face when he found it empty.
+
+After he had speared a piece of bacon with his two-tined fork, and
+landed it safely on his plate, he rolled his eyes around the table. "Did
+you know this is my buthday, Mammy?" he asked. "I'm nine yeahs ole
+to-day."
+
+"That's so, honey," she answered, cheerfully. "You'se gettin' to be a
+big boy now, plenty big enough to keep out o' mischief an' take keer o'
+yo' clothes. I'll declare if there isn't anothah hole in yo' shirt this
+blessed minute!"
+
+The lecture that followed was not of the gala-day kind, but John Jay
+consoled himself by thinking that he would probably have had a cuffing
+instead had it happened on any other day.
+
+After breakfast Mammy went away to do a day's scrubbing at Rosehaven.
+The children spent most of the morning in watching the road. Every cloud
+of dust that tokened an approaching traveller raised a new hope. Many
+people went by on horses or in carriages. Once in a while there was a
+stray bicycler, but nobody turned in towards the cabin.
+
+After a while, in virtue of its being his especial holiday, John Jay
+ordered the smaller children to stay in the yard, while he took a swim
+in the pond. But the pleasure did not last long. He could only splash
+and paddle around dog-fashion, and the sun burnt his back so badly that
+he was glad to get out of the water.
+
+Afternoon came, and nothing unusual had happened, but John Jay kept up
+his courage and looked around for something to do to occupy the time. A
+wide plank leaned up against the little shed at one side of the cabin.
+It made him think of Uncle Billy's cellar door, where he had spent many
+a happy hour sliding.
+
+"I'm goin' to have a coast," he said to Bud. A smooth board which he
+found near the woodpile furnished him with a fine toboggan. By the help
+of an overturned chicken-coop, which he dragged across the yard, he
+managed to climb to the top of the shed. Squatting down on the board, he
+gave himself a starting push with one hand. The downward progress was
+not so smooth or so rapid as he desired.
+
+"Needs greasin'," he said, looking at the plank with a knowing frown. A
+rummage through the old corner cupboard where the provisions were kept
+provided him with a wide strip of bacon rind, such as Uncle Billy used
+to rub on his saw. John Jay carried it out of doors and carefully rubbed
+the plank from one end to the other. Then he greased the underside of
+the little board on which he intended to sit. The result was all he
+could wish. He slid down the plank at a speed that took his breath. Up
+he climbed from the coop to the shed, carrying his board with him, and
+down he slid to the ground, time and again, yelling and laughing as he
+went, until Bud began to be anxious for his turn. When the little fellow
+was boosted to the shed, he did not make a noise as John Jay had done;
+he slid in solemn silence and unspoken delight.
+
+Over an hour of such sport had gone by when Bud remarked, "Ivy's
+a-missin' all the fun."
+
+"She's too little to go down by herself," answered John Jay; "but if I
+had another little board I'd take her down in front of me."
+
+He began looking around the wood-pile for one. Then he caught sight of
+the big dish-pan, which had been set outside on the logs to sun.
+
+"That's the ve'y thing!" he exclaimed. "It'll jus' hole her." The bacon
+rind was nearly rubbed dry by this time, but the pan, heated by sitting
+so long in the sun, drew out all the grease that remained. It took the
+united strength of both boys to get Ivy to the top of the shed, but at
+last she was seated, with John Jay just behind her on his little board,
+his legs thrown protectingly around the pan. They shot down so fast that
+Ivy was terrified. No sooner was she dumped out of the pan on to the
+ground than she retired to a safe distance, and stuck her thumb in her
+mouth. Nothing could induce her to get in again.
+
+"I'm goin' down in the dish-pan by myself," announced Bud from the shed
+roof. "It jus' fits me."
+
+John Jay grinned, and stood a little to one side to watch the
+performance. "Go it, Brer Tarrypin!" he shouted.
+
+Maybe Bud leaned a little too much to one side. Maybe the pan missed the
+guiding legs that had held it steady before. At any rate something was
+amiss, for half-way down the plank it spun dizzily around to one side,
+and spilled the luckless Bud out on the chicken-coop. Usually he made
+very little fuss when he was hurt, but this time he set up such a roar
+that John Jay was frightened. When he saw blood trickling out of the
+child's mouth, he began to cry himself. He was just about to run for
+Aunt Susan, when Bud suddenly stopped crying, and turned toward him with
+a look of terror.
+
+"Aw, I done knock a tooth out!" he exclaimed, and began crying harder
+than before, feeling that he had been damaged beyond repair.
+
+John Jay laughed when he found that nothing worse had happened than the
+loss of a little white front tooth, and soon dried Bud's tears by
+promising that a new one would certainly fill the hole in time.
+
+"Keep yoah mouf shet much as you can when Mammy comes home to-night," he
+cautioned; "for I sut'n'ly don't want to ketch a lickin' on my buthday.
+It's mighty lucky the pan didn't get a hole knocked in her."
+
+Mammy came home just before dark. The children were on the fence waiting
+for her. John Jay felt sure that if Miss Hallie knew that it was his
+birthday she would send him something. He wondered if Mammy had told
+her. The basket on the old woman's head was always interesting to these
+children, for it never came back from Rosehaven empty. The cook always
+saved the scraps for Sheba's hungry little charges. This evening John
+Jay kept his eyes fixed on it expectantly, as he followed it up the
+walk. He had thrown one foot up behind him, and rested the toes of it in
+his clasped hands as he hopped along on the other. Maybe there might be
+a birthday cake in that basket, with little candles on it. He didn't
+know, of course,--but--_maybe_.
+
+They all crowded around, as Sheba put the basket on the table and took
+out some scraps of boiled ham, a handful of cookies, and half of an
+apple pie. That was all. John Jay looked at them a moment with misty
+eyes, and turned away with a lump in his throat. He was beginning to
+grow discouraged.
+
+Mammy was so tired that she did not cook anything for supper, as she had
+intended, but set out the contents of the basket beside the corn bread
+left from dinner. Before they were through eating somebody called for
+sis' Sheba to come quick, that Aunt Susan was having one of her old
+spells.
+
+"Like enough I won't get back for a good while," said Mammy, as she
+hurriedly left the table. "Put Ivy to bed as soon as you wash her face,
+John Jay, an' go yo'self when the propah time comes. Be a good boy now,
+and don't forget to close the doah tight when you go in."
+
+When Ivy was safely tucked away among the pillows, the two boys sat down
+on the door-step to wait once more for the birthday Santa Claus. John
+Jay repeated what the thoughtless fellow had said:
+
+"If I don't get there by noon, it'll be because something has happened;
+anyway, somebody'll be prancing along about sundown." In the week just
+passed, Bud had come to believe in the birthday Santa Claus as firmly
+as John Jay.
+
+"Wondah wot he's doin' now?" he said, after a long pause and an anxious
+glance down the darkening road.
+
+Ah, well for those two trusting little hearts that they could not know!
+He was sitting on the steps of the porch at Rosehaven with a guitar on
+his knee, and smiling tenderly into Sally Lou's blue eyes as he sang,
+"Oh, yes, I ever will be true!"
+
+It grew darker and darker. The katydids began their endless quarrel in
+the trees. A night-owl hooted dismally over in the woods. The children
+stopped talking, and sat in anxious silence. Presently Bud edged up
+closer, and put a sympathetic arm around his brother. A moment after, he
+began to cry.
+
+"What you snufflin' for?" asked John Jay savagely. "'Tain't yo'
+buthday."
+
+"But I'm afraid you ain't goin' to have any eithah," sobbed the little
+fellow, strangely wrought upon by this long silent waiting in the
+darkness.
+
+"Aw, you go 'long to bed," said John Jay, with a careless, grown-up air.
+"If anything comes I'll wake you up. No use for two of us to be settin'
+heah."
+
+Bud was sleepy, and crept away obediently; but the day was spoiled, and
+he went to bed sore with his brother's disappointment.
+
+John Jay sat down again to keep his lonely tryst. He looked up at the
+faithless stars. They had failed to help him, but in his desperation he
+determined to appeal to them once more. So he picked out the seven
+largest ones he could see and repeated very slowly, in a voice that
+would tremble, the old charm:
+
+  "Star-light, star bright,
+  Seventh star I've seen to-night;
+  I wish I may and I wish I might
+  Have the wish come true I wish to-night."
+
+Then he made his wish again, with a heart felt earnestness that was
+almost an ache. Oh, surely the day was not going to end in this cruel
+silence! Just then he heard the thud of a horse's hoofs on the wooden
+bridge, far down the road. Nearer and louder it came. Somebody was
+prancing by at last. He stood up, straining his eyes in his smiling
+eagerness to see. Nearer and nearer the hoof-beats came in the
+starlight. "_Bookity book! Bookity book!_" The horseman paused a moment
+in front of Uncle Billy's.
+
+John Jay hopped from one foot to the other in his impatient gladness.
+Then his heart sank as the hoof-beats went on down the road, _Bookity
+book! Bookity book!_ growing fainter and fainter, until at last they
+were drowned by the voices of the noisy katydids.
+
+He stood still a moment, so bitterly disappointed that it seemed to him
+he could not possibly bear it. Then he went in and shut the door,--shut
+the door on all his bright hopes, on all his fond dreams, on the day
+that was to have held such happiness, but that had brought instead the
+cruelest disappointment of his life.
+
+The tears ran down his little black face as he undressed himself. He sat
+on the edge of the trundle-bed a moment, whispering brokenly, "They
+wasn't anybody livin' that cared 'bout it's bein' my buthday!" Then
+throwing himself face downward on his pillow, he cried softly with long
+choking sobs, until he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very
+little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes.
+
+"Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy," sighed Mammy. "It
+slides right off'n him like watah off a duck's back."
+
+"He's like the rollin' stone that gethah's no moss," remarked Uncle
+Billy. "He goes rollickin' through the days, from sunup 'twel sundown,
+so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo' they kin
+strike root."
+
+Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times
+with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all
+around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days
+especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the
+Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the
+Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue.
+
+[Illustration: Uncle Billy]
+
+But now blackberry season had begun,--a season that he hated, because
+Mammy expected him to help her early and late in the patch. So many of
+the shining berries slipped down his throat, so many things called his
+attention away from the brambly bushes, that sometimes it took hours for
+him to fill his battered quart cup.
+
+Usually his reward was a juicy pie, but this year Mammy changed her
+plan. Berries were in demand at Rosehaven, and she had very little time
+to spend in going after them.
+
+"I'll give you five cents a gallon for all you'll pick," she said to
+John Jay. He looked at her in amazement. As he had never had any money
+in his life, this seemed a princely offer. He was standing outside by
+the stick chimney when she made the promise. After one sidelong glance,
+to see if she were in earnest, he threw his feet wildly into the air and
+walked off on his hands; then, after two or three somersaults backward,
+he stood up, panting.
+
+"Where's the buckets at?" he demanded, "I'm goin' to pick every bush in
+this neck o' woods as clean as you'd pick a chicken."
+
+Now it was Mammy's turn to be surprised. She had expected that her
+offer would lure him on for an hour or two, maybe for a whole day. She
+had not supposed that it would keep him faithfully at work for a week,
+but it did. His nimble fingers stripped every roadside vine within a
+mile of the cabin. His hands and legs, and even his face, were
+criss-crossed with many brier scratches. The sun beat down on him
+unmercifully, but he stuck to his task so closely that he seemed to see
+berries even when his eyes were shut. Every day great pailfuls of the
+shining black beads were sent over to Rosehaven, and every night he
+dropped a few more nickels into the stocking foot hidden under his
+pillow.
+
+"Berries is all mighty nigh cleaned out," he said one noon, when he was
+about to start out again after dinner. "Uncle Billy says there's lots of
+'em down in the gandah thicket, but I'se mos' afeered to go there."
+
+"Nothin' won't tech you in daylight, honey," answered Mammy,
+encouragingly, "but I would n't go through there at night for love or
+money I'd as lief go into a lion's cage."
+
+"Did you ever see any ghos'es down there Mammy?" asked John Jay with
+eager interest, yet cautiously lowering his voice and taking a step
+nearer.
+
+"No," admitted Mammy, "but oldah people than I have seen 'em. All night
+long there's great white gandahs flappin' round through that thicket
+'thout any heads on. You know they's an awful wicked man buried down
+there in the woods, an' the sperrits of them he's inju'ed ha'nts the
+thicket every night. There isn't anybody, that I know of, that 'ud go
+down there aftah dark for anything on this livin' yearth."
+
+"Then who sees 'em?" asked John Jay, with a skeptical grin.
+
+"Who sees 'em?" repeated Mammy wrathfully, angry because of the doubt
+implied by his question and his face. "Who sees 'em? They've been seen
+by generations of them as is dead and gone. Who is you, I'd like to
+know, standin' up there a-mockin' at me so impident and a-askin' 'Who
+sees 'em?'"
+
+She turned to begin her dish washing, with a scornful air that seemed to
+say that he was beneath any further notice. Still, no sooner had she
+piled the dishes up in the pan than she turned to him again, with her
+hands on her hips.
+
+"Go down and ask Uncle Mose," she said, still indignant. "He can tell
+you tales that'll send cole chills up an' down yo' spine. He saw an
+awful thing in there once with his own eyes. 'Twan't a gandah, but
+somethin' long an slim flyin' low in the bushes--he reckoned it was
+twenty feet long. It had a little thin head like a snake, an' yeahs that
+stuck up like rabbit's. It was all white, an' had fo' little short legs
+an' two little short wings, an' it was moah'n flesh an' blood could
+stand, he say, to see that long, slim, white thing runnin' an' a-flyin'
+at the same time through the bushes, low down neah the groun'. You jus'
+go ask him."
+
+John Jay swung his buckets irresolutely. "I don't believe I'll go down
+there aftah berries," he said. "I don't know what to do. They isn't any
+moah anywhere else."
+
+Mammy wished that she had not gone to such pains to convince him.
+"Nothin' evah comes around in the daytime," she insisted, "an' I reckon
+berries is mighty plentiful, too," she added, persuasively. "Nobody evah
+saw anything down there in the daylight, honey. I'd go if I was you."
+
+John Jay stood on one foot. He was afraid of the headless ganders, but
+he did want those berries. He walked out through the door, hesitated,
+and stood on one foot again. Then he went slowly down the hill. Mammy,
+standing in the door with her apron flung over her head, watched him
+climb up on the fence and sit there to consider. Finally, he dropped
+down to the other side, and started in the direction of the gander
+thicket.
+
+It was a place that the negroes had been afraid of since her earliest
+recollection. It was only a little stretch of woodland, where the
+neglected underbrush had grown into a tangled thicket. No one remembered
+now what had given rise to the name, and no one living had ever seen the
+ghostly white ganders that were said to haunt the place at night. Still,
+the story was handed down from one to another, and the place was shunned
+as much as possible.
+
+Brier Crook church stood at one end, with its desolate little graveyard,
+where the colored people buried their dead under its weeping willows and
+gloomy cedars.
+
+John Jay avoided the lonely road that led in that direction, and took
+the one that wound around the other end of the thicket, past a deserted
+mill. Yet, when he reached the ruined old building, with its staring
+windows and sunken roof, he was half sorry that he had not gone the
+other way.
+
+The berries were on the far side of the thicket, and he was obliged to
+pass either the graveyard or the old mill to reach them. The possibility
+of plunging boldly into the thicket and pushing his way through to the
+other side had never occurred to him, although it is doubtful if he
+would have dared to do so even had he thought of it. He ran down the dry
+bed of the stream, and past the silent moss-grown wheel, breathing a
+sigh of relief when he came out into an open field beyond.
+
+Balancing himself on the top rail of the fence, he looked cautiously
+along the edge of the thicket. It did not look so dismal in there, after
+all. A woodpecker's cheerful tapping sounded somewhere within.
+Butterflies flitted fearlessly down into its shady ravines. A squirrel
+ran out on a limb, and sat chattering at him saucily. Then a big gray
+rabbit rustled through the leaves, and went loping away into the depths
+of the thicket.
+
+"I don't believe there's anything skeery in there at all!" exclaimed
+John Jay aloud. After starting several times, and stopping to look all
+around and listen, he followed the rabbit into the bushes. Plunging down
+a narrow cow-path which wound in and out, he came to an open space where
+a few trees had fallen. Here, with an exclamation of delight, he pounced
+upon the finest, largest berries he had ever seen. They dropped into the
+tin pail with a noisy thud at first, and then with scarcely a sound, as
+they rapidly piled higher and higher.
+
+Both pails were filled in a much shorter time than usual, and then he
+sat down on a wide log to enjoy the lunch he had brought with him. There
+were two big slices of bread and jam in one pocket, and a big apple in
+the other. As he sat there, slowly munching, he began to feel drowsy. He
+had awakened early that morning, and had worked hard in the hot sun. He
+stretched himself out full length on the log, to rest his back while he
+finished eating his apple.
+
+The branches overhead swayed gently back and forth. His eyes followed
+them as they kept up that slow, monotonous motion against the bright
+sky. He had no intention of closing them; in fact, he did not know they
+were closed, for in that same moment he was sound asleep.
+
+The woodpecker went on tapping; the squirrel whisked back and forth
+along the limb; the same gray rabbit came out and hopped along beside
+the log where he lay. Suddenly, it raised itself up to look at the
+strange sight, and then bounded away again. The sun dropped lower and
+lower. In the open fields there was still light, but the thicket was
+gray with the subdued shadows of the gloaming.
+
+John Jay might have slept on all night had not a leaf fluttered slowly
+down from the tree above, and brushed across his face. He opened his
+eyes, looking all around him in a bewildered way. Then he sat up, and
+peered through the bushes. A cold perspiration covered him when he
+realized that it was dusk and that he was in the middle of the gander
+thicket. He snatched up the blackberries, a pail in each hand, and stood
+looking helplessly around him, for he could not decide which way to go.
+In front of him stretched half a mile of the haunted thicket. It was
+either to push his way through that as quickly as possible, or to go
+back by the long, lonesome road over which he had come.
+
+Just then a harmless flock of geese belonging to an old market-gardener
+who lived near came waddling up from the creek, on the way home to their
+barn-yard. They moved along in a silent procession, pushing their long,
+thin necks through the underbrush. John Jay was too terrified to see
+that their heads were properly in place, and that they were as harmless
+as the flock that fed in Aunt Susan's dooryard.
+
+"They'll get me! They'll get me!" he whimpered, as they came nearer and
+nearer, for his feet seemed so heavy that he could not lift them when he
+tried to run. Made desperate by his fear, he raised first one pail of
+berries and then the other, hurling them at the startled geese with all
+the force his wiry little arms could muster.
+
+Instantly their long white wings shot up through the bushes. There was
+an angry fluttering and hissing, as half running, half flying, they
+waddled faster towards home. John Jay did not look to see what direction
+they were taking. He was sure they were after him. He could hear their
+long wings flapping just behind him; at least, he thought he could, but
+the noise he heard was the snapping of the twigs he trampled in his
+headlong flight. No greyhound ever bounded through a wood with lighter
+feet than those which carried him. His eyes were wide with fright. His
+heart beat so hard in his throat he thought he would surely die before
+he could reach the cabin. At every step the light seemed to be growing
+dimmer and the thicket denser, although he thought he certainly must
+have been running long enough to have reached the clearing. Still he ran
+on, and on, and on. The recollection of one of Mammy's stories flashed
+across his mind.
+
+[Illustration: The ganders had chased him around]
+
+Once a man had lost his way in this wood, and the ganders had chased him
+around and around until daylight. The thought made him so weak in the
+knees that he was ready to drop from fright and exhaustion. Then he
+recalled a superstition that he had often heard, that anyone who has
+lost his way may find it again by turning his pocket wrong side out. He
+was twitching at his with trembling hands, looking with eyes too
+frightened to see, and fumbling with fingers too stiff with fear to
+feel, but the pocket seemed to have disappeared. "It's conju'ed too," he
+wailed, as he ran heedlessly on.
+
+Something long and white slapped across his face. An unearthly, wavering
+voice sounded a hoarse, long-drawn "Moo-oo-oo!" just in front of him. He
+sank down in a helpless little heap, blubbering and groaning aloud, with
+his teeth chattering, and the tears running down his clammy face. There
+was a louder crackling, and out of the bushes walked an old spotted cow,
+calmly switching her white tail and looking at John Jay in gentle-eyed
+wonder.
+
+Strength came back to the boy with that familiar sight, but not being
+sure that the cow was not as ghostly as the ganders, he scrambled to his
+feet and started to run again. To avoid passing the cow, he turned in
+another direction. This time, it happened to be the right one, and in a
+few moments more he had dashed into the open. Then he saw that it was
+not yet dark in the fields.
+
+Mammy heard the sound of rapid running up the path, and came to the
+door. John Jay dropped at her feet, trembling and cold, and so
+frightened that he could only cling to her skirts, sobbing piteously.
+When, at last, he found his breath, all he could gasp was, "Oh, Mammy!
+the gandahs are aftah me! the gandahs are aftah me!"
+
+Big boy as he was, Mammy stooped and lifted him in her arms, and holding
+him close, with his head on her shoulder, rocked back and forth in the
+big wooden chair until he grew calmer. Not until he had sobbed out the
+whole story, and wiped his eyes several times on her apron, did he see
+that there was company in the room.
+
+George Chadwick was sitting by the door. It was the first time he had
+been in the cabin since his return from college. He had ridden up from
+the toll-gate on a passing wagon to see his old friend, Sheba, and had
+been there the greater part of the afternoon, listening to her tales of
+his mother in the old slavery days. He had not intended to accept her
+urgent invitation to stay to supper, but when he saw that she shared
+John Jay's fright, he decided to remain. Had it not been for his
+protecting presence in the house, Mammy was so affected by the boy's
+story that she would have barred every opening. Then, cowering around
+one little flickering candle, they would have fed each other's
+superstitious fears until bedtime. George knew this, and so he stayed to
+reassure them by his matter-of-fact explanations, and his cheerful
+common sense. While he could not convince them that they had been
+needlessly alarmed, he drew their attention to other things, by stories
+of college life and experiences at the North, while Sheba bustled about,
+bringing out the best of her meagre store to do him honor.
+
+Ivy, scrubbed until she shone, and in a stiffly starched apron, sat on
+his knee and sucked her thumb. Bud squatted at his feet in silence,
+sticking his little red tongue in and out of the hole where the lost
+tooth had been. As for John Jay, his hero-worship passed that night into
+warmest love. From that time on, he would have gone through fire and
+water to serve his "Rev'und Gawge,"--anywhere in fact, save one place.
+Never any more was there motive deep enough or power strong enough to
+drag him within calling distance of the gander thicket.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Now that berry picking was at an end, John Jay slipped back into his old
+lazy ways. Errands were run with lagging feet; work was done in the
+easiest way possible, and everything was left undone that he could by
+any means avoid. Mammy scolded when she came home at night and found
+both water-pail and wood-box empty, but he went serenely on with his
+supper. No matter what happened, nothing ever interfered with his
+appetite.
+
+"Those chillun are gettin' as bad as little young turkeys 'bout strayin'
+away from home," mumbled Aunt Susan one morning, as she watched them
+slip through the fence soon after Sheba had left the house. "An' they
+ain't anything wussah than young turkeys for runnin' off. 'Peahs like
+that kind of poultry is nevah satisfied with where they is, but always
+want to be where they isn't. It's the same with those chillun."
+
+Although Aunt Susan did not know it, there was one place where John Jay
+and his flock of two were always content to stay; that was on the steps
+at the side door of the church. Nearly every afternoon found them
+sitting there in a solemn row, waiting for the shadows to grow long
+across the grass, for it was then that George oftenest came to play on
+the organ. He always smiled on the three grave little figures, waiting
+so patiently for the music of his vesper hymns.
+
+It touched the lonely man to have John Jay follow him about, with that
+same wistful look in his eyes that a faithful dog has for its master.
+Sometimes he sat down on the steps beside the children and talked to
+them awhile, just to see the boy's face light up with pleasure.
+
+It was a mystery to Sheba, how a dignified minister could care for the
+companionship of such a harum-scarum little creature as her grandson.
+She did know the tie that bound them, but their natures were as near
+akin as the acorn and the oak. In John Jay the man saw his own childhood
+with all its unanswered questions and dumb, groping ambitions; while the
+boy, looking up to his "Rev'und Gawge" as the highest standard of all
+manliness, felt faint stirrings within, of the possibility of such
+growth for himself.
+
+Early one morning George sent a message to Sheba, asking that John Jay
+might be allowed to spend the day with him and help watch the toll-gate,
+while Mars' Nat was in town. That morning still stands out in the boy's
+memory, as one of the happiest he ever spent.
+
+Along in the middle of the afternoon, when travel on the turnpike had
+almost ceased on account of the heat, George went into his room and lay
+down. John Jay sat on the floor of the porch, holding the old hound's
+head in his lap, and lazily smoothing its long soft ears. He felt very
+important when a wagon rattled up and the toll was dropped into his
+fingers. He wished that everybody he knew would ride by and find him
+sitting there in charge; but no one else came for more than an hour. It
+had seemed as long as ten hours, with nothing to do but slap at the
+flies and talk to the sleepy hound. John Jay grinned when he saw the
+arrival, for it was a man whom he knew.
+
+"Good evenin', Mistah Boden," he called, eagerly. The man stopped his
+horses.
+
+"Hello!" he said. "You're in charge, are you? Where's the rest of the
+folks?"
+
+"Mars' Nat, he's gone to town to-day," answered John Jay, proudly. "I'm
+keepin' toll-gate this evenin', Mistah Boden."
+
+"So!" exclaimed the man, with a cunning gleam in his little eyes.
+"That's the lay of the land, is it?"
+
+Instead of taking out his pocket-book, he threw one foot over his knee,
+and began to ask questions in a friendly manner that flattered John Jay.
+
+"Let's see. Your name's Hickman, hain't it?"
+
+"Yessa, John Jay Hickman," answered the boy.
+
+"Yes," drawled the man, gnawing at a plug of tobacco which he took from
+his pocket. "I know all about you. Your mammy used to cook for my wife,
+and your gran'mammy washed at our house one summer. How is the old
+woman, anyhow?"
+
+"She's well, thank you, Mistah Boden," was the pleased answer.
+
+"And then there's that brother of her's--Billy! old Uncle Billy! How's
+he getting on?"
+
+"Oh, he's mighty complainin', Mistah Boden; he's got such a misery in
+his back all the time that he say he jus' aint got ambition 'nuff to get
+out'n his own way."
+
+"Is that so?" was the reply, in a tone of flattering interest. The man
+beckoned him with his whip to step closer.
+
+"Look here, boy," he said, in a confidential tone, "it's a mighty lucky
+thing for me that Nat Chadwick left you here instead of a stranger.
+Every penny of change I started with this morning dropped out through a
+hole in my pocket somewhere. I didn't find it out until I got within
+sight of the place; then, thinks I to myself, 'oh, it won't make any
+difference. Nat and I are old friends; he'll pass me.' I guess you can
+do the same, can't you, being as you're in his place, and I'm an old
+friend of your family? You needn't say anything about it, and I'll do as
+much for you some day."
+
+John Jay looked puzzled. Before he could reply George walked out on the
+porch and stood beside him. He bowed to the man politely. "I'll take the
+toll, if you please, Mr. Boden. Put up the bar, John."
+
+The man hesitated a moment, then tossed him the change, and gave the
+horses a cut with his whip that sent them dashing down the road.
+
+"If he wasn't jus' tryin' to sneak his way through 'thout payin'!"
+exclaimed John Jay, indignantly. George made no comment, but John Jay
+seemed unable to quit talking about the occurrence. Half an hour later
+he broke out again: "He thought 'cause I was jus' a little boy he could
+cheat me, an' nobody would evah know the difference. I nevah in all my
+life befo' heard tell of anything so mean!"
+
+"Haven't you?" asked George, with such peculiar emphasis and such a
+queer little smile that John Jay felt guilty, although he could not have
+told why.
+
+"No, I nevah did," he insisted.
+
+George leaned against the door-casing, and looked thoughtfully across
+the fields. "There are more turnpikes in life than one, my boy," he said
+kindly, "and every one has its toll-gate. There is the road to learning.
+I gave up everything to get through that gate, even my health. One
+cannot be anything or do anything worth while without paying some sort
+of toll. It may be time or strength or hard work or patience, and
+sometimes we have to give them all."
+
+"'Peahs like I've nevah struck any such roads in my travellin',"
+answered John Jay, carelessly, who often understood George's little
+parables far better than he cared to acknowledge.
+
+"But I know one road that you are on now, where you try to slip out of
+paying what you owe every day."
+
+John Jay hung his head, and rubbed his bare feet together in embarrassed
+silence. If the Reverend George said it was so, it must be so, although
+he did not know just what he was hinting at.
+
+"Mr. Boden knows very well," continued George, "that the money that is
+paid here goes to keep the road in good condition for him to travel
+over. He is very glad to have such a good pike provided for him, but he
+wants it for nothing. I know a poor old woman who keeps the road smooth
+for somebody. She works early and late, in hot weather and cold, to earn
+food and shelter and clothes for somebody; and that somebody eats her
+bread, and wears out the clothes, and sleeps under her roof, and never
+pays any toll. He owes her thanks and willing service,--all the help he
+can give her poor, tired old body, but she never gets even the thanks.
+He takes all her drudgery as a matter of course."
+
+John Jay's head dropped lower and lower, as he screwed his toes around
+in the dust of the path, mortified and embarrassed. All the whippings of
+his life had never stung him so deeply as George's quiet words. He was
+used to being scolded for his laziness. He never paid any attention to
+that; but to have his "Rev'und Gawge" regard him as dishonest as Mr.
+Boden hurt him more than words could express.
+
+Another wagon came rattling up in a cloud of dust. Without waiting to
+see the newcomer, he dodged around the corner of the house and ran down
+to the barn. A pair of puppies came frisking out ready for a romp, and
+an old Maltese cat, stretched out in the sun, stood up and arched its
+back at his approach. He took no notice of them, but crawling up into
+the hay, threw himself down in a dark corner with his face hidden in his
+arms.
+
+Mars' Nat came home after awhile. John Jay could hear Ned putting the
+horse into the stall, and throwing the corn into the feed-box. Then
+everything was still for a long time. The sun stole through the cracks
+of the barn in wide shining streaks, with little motes of dust dancing
+up and down in the golden light, but John Jay did not see them. A shadow
+darkened the doorway. He did not see that, for his face was still
+hidden. There was a step on the barn floor, and a rustling in the hay
+beside him; then George's hand rested lightly on his head, and his voice
+said, soothingly, "There, there! I wouldn't cry about it."
+
+"Oh, I nevah thought about things that way befo'!" sobbed John Jay.
+"I'll nevah sneak out of the work again. I'll tote the wood and watah
+'thout waitin' to be asked, an' I'll nevah lick out my tongue at her
+behine her back as long as I live!"
+
+George bit his lips to keep from laughing, although he was touched by
+the little penitent's distress.
+
+"Do you know why I said such hard things to you?" he asked. "It was to
+open your eyes. I want to make a man of you, John Jay. Let me tell you
+some things about your grandmother that you have never heard. Her whole
+life has been a struggle, and such a very sad one."
+
+John Jay rubbed his shirt sleeve across his eyes and gave a final
+snuffle. Some people never have the awakening that came to him that
+afternoon. Some people go along all their days with no other thought in
+life than to burrow through their own mole-hills. There in the hay, with
+the shining dust of the sunbeams falling athwart the old barn floor, the
+boy lay and listened. Thoughts that he had no words for, ambitions that
+he could not express, yet that filled him with vague longing, seemed to
+vibrate along the earnest voice, and tremble from the fulness of
+George's heart into his. Even after George stopped talking and began to
+whistle softly in the pause that followed, John Jay lay quite still with
+his face hidden in his arms.
+
+Ned came in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and
+singing at the top of his voice. The sound seemed to bring John Jay back
+to his common every-day self. He sat up, grinning as if he had never
+heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his
+eyesight clearer. As he slid down from the hay and walked along beside
+George, he noticed for the first time how slow and faltering the steps
+beside his had grown. As they climbed up the hill to the church, it
+seemed to him that the beloved face looked unusually thin and haggard in
+the strong light of the sunset.
+
+George did not play long this evening. He knew that the quiet little
+listener on the steps bent as readily to the changing moods of his
+melody as the clover does to the fitful breezes; so he changed abruptly
+from the minor chords that his fingers instinctively reached for, to an
+old hymn that smoothed away the pathetic pucker of the boy's forehead.
+Then he pulled out the stops and began a loud burst of martial music, so
+glad and triumphant, that, listening, one felt all great things possible
+of achievement. John Jay stood up, swinging his cap on the end of a
+stick which he carried, with all the curves and rythmic motions of a
+drum major.
+
+After George came out and locked the door, he stood for a moment looking
+out fondly across the peaceful fields, still fair with the fading glow
+of the summer sun. John Jay looked too, feeling at the same time the
+touch of a caressing hand laid lightly on his bare head, but he could
+not see the lips above him that moved in a silent benediction.
+
+When Mammy came home that night, there was wood in the box and water in
+the pail. The loose boards lying around the yard had been piled up
+neatly, and the paths were freshly swept. All that evening John Jay's
+eyes followed her with curious glances whichever way she turned, as if
+he found her changed. The change was in John Jay.
+
+Next day, when she came home, she found the same state of affairs. It
+was early in the afternoon, and the children were out playing. She hung
+up her sun-bonnet, and dropped wearily down into a chair. Then,
+remembering a pile of clothes that must be mended before dark, she got
+up and began to hunt for her thimble and thread.
+
+"That tawmentin' boy must have lost 'em," she exclaimed, after a vain
+search through her work-basket. The clothes were lying on the bed where
+she had put them. As she gathered them in her arms the thimble rolled
+out, and a spool of thread with a needle sticking in it fell to the
+floor.
+
+[Illustration: George came out and locked the door]
+
+She shook out Ivy's little blue dress, and began turning it around to
+find the seam that was ripped. It was drawn together with queer
+straggling stitches that only the most awkward of fingers could have
+made. The white buttons on Bud's shirt-waist had been sewed on with
+black thread, and a spot of blood told where somebody's thumb had felt
+the sharp thrust of a needle. John Jay's trousers lay at the bottom of
+the pile, with a little round, puckered patch of calico on each knee.
+
+The tears came into Mammy's eyes as she saw the boy's poor attempt to
+help. "I'se afeerd he's goin' to die," she muttered in alarm. "I
+sut'n'ly is. Poah little fellow: he's mighty tryin' to a body's patience
+sometimes, an' he's made a mess of this mendin', for suah, but I reckon
+he means all right. He's not so onthinkin' an' onthankful aftah all."
+She laid the spool and thimble on the window-sill, and folded her hands
+to rest awhile. There was a tremulous smile on her careworn old face.
+For one day, at least, John Jay had paid his toll.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Boys do not grow into saints in a single night, in the way that Jack's
+beanstalk grew from earth to sky. Sainthood comes slowly, like the
+blossom on a century plant; there must be a hundred years of thorny
+stem-life first.
+
+Mammy soon lost all her fears of John Jay's dying. Although the promise
+made to George on the haymow was faithfully kept, he could no more avoid
+getting into mischief than a weathercock can keep from turning when the
+wind blows.
+
+The October frosts came, sweetening the persimmons and ripening the nuts
+in the hazel copse; but it nipped the children's bare feet, and made the
+thinly clad little shoulders shiver. John Jay gladly shuffled into the
+old clothes sent over from Rosehaven. They were many sizes too big, but
+he turned back the coat sleeves and hitched up his suspenders,
+regardless of appearances. Bud fared better, for the suit that fell to
+his lot was but slightly worn, and almost fitted him. As for Ivy, she
+was decked out in such finery that the boys scarcely dared to touch her.
+She had been given a long blue velvet cloak that the youngest Haven
+could no longer squeeze into. It was trimmed with shaggy fur that had
+once been white. Ivy admired it so much that when she was not wearing it
+out of doors she was carrying it around in the house in a big roll, as
+tenderly as if it had been a great doll.
+
+It was an odd little procession that filed past Uncle Billy's house
+every day, on the way to the woods for autumn stores. John Jay came
+first, with a rickety wagon he had made out of a soap-box and two solid
+wooden wheels. He looked like a little old man, with his long coat and
+turned up trowsers. Bud came next in his new suit, but he had lost his
+hat, and was obliged to wear a handkerchief tied over his ears. Ivy
+brought up the rear, continually tripping on her long cloak, and jolting
+her white toboggan cap down over her eyes at almost every step.
+
+Nuts and persimmons and wild fox-grapes filled the little wagon many
+times, and made a welcome addition to Mammy's meagre bill of fare.
+
+Late one evening John Jay came running up the path all out of breath.
+The yellow candle-light streamed out through the cabin window. He
+stopped and looked in, sniffing the air with keen enjoyment, for Mammy
+was stewing the rabbit he had caught that morning in a snare.
+
+He could see Bud sitting on the floor, with his feet harnessed up as
+horses. He was sawing the reins back and forth and remorselessly
+switching his own legs until they flew up and down in fine style. John
+Jay watched him with a grin on his face.
+
+Presently Mammy, turning to season the stew, saw the black face pressed
+close against the window-pane. With a startled shriek she gave the
+pepper-pot such a shake that the lid flew off, and nearly all of the
+pepper went into the stew.
+
+"Jus' see what you done!" she scolded, as John Jay walked into the house
+an instant later. "Next time you come gawkin' in the window at me in the
+dark, I'll peppah _you_ 'stid o' the rabbit!"
+
+John Jay hastened to change the subject. "I sole a bushel of hickory
+nuts to Mistah Bemis jus' now," he stammered, "an' he's goin' to take
+some mo' next week. I'm savin' up to get you all somethin' mighty nice
+for Chrismus." He jingled his pockets suggestively; but Mammy was too
+busy skimming the pepper out of the stew to make any reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One warm, mellow afternoon when the golden-rod was at its sunniest, and
+the iron-weed flaunted its royal purple across the fields in the trail
+of the Indian summer, John Jay went down to the toll-gate cottage. He
+found his Reverend George sitting on the porch in his overcoat, with a
+shawl thrown over his knees. A book lay in his lap, but his hands were
+folded on the open pages, and he was looking far away across the brown
+fields of tattered corn-stalks. He was much better than he had been for
+several weeks, and welcomed John Jay so gaily, that the child felt that
+a weight had somehow been lifted from him. Mammy and Uncle Billy had
+been whispering together many times of late, and the little listener
+shared their fears. He had made so many visits to the toll-gate since
+the day he was left in charge, that he felt almost as much at home there
+as Mars' Nat himself. Once George did all the talking while John Jay
+listened with his head bashfully tipped to one side; now they seemed to
+have changed places. It was George who listened.
+
+John Jay had been kept at home for several days, and had much to tell.
+For an hour or more he entertained George with accounts of his rabbit
+snares, his nutting expeditions, and his persimmon hunts. He told about
+the dye Mammy had made from the sumach berries which he had carried
+home, and how Ivy had dropped her pet duck into it. He imitated Bud's
+antics when he upset the kettle of soft soap, and he had much to say
+about the young owl which they had caught, and caged under a wash-tub.
+
+He did not notice that he was doing all the talking this afternoon, but
+filled the pauses that sometimes fell between them by idly playing
+jack-stones with a handful of acorns. George was thinking as they sat
+there that this might be the last time that they two would ever sit in
+this way together, and he was searching for some words with which to
+prepare the child for a sudden leave-taking in case it should be soon.
+
+At last he cleared his throat. John Jay looked up expectantly, but just
+then Mars' Nat walked around the house.
+
+"Here comes Doctor Leonard," he said, nodding towards a rapidly
+approaching horseman. "Howdy, Doc," he called, as the man drew rein, and
+felt in his pocket for some change to pay his toll. "What's your hurry?"
+
+"I've a call over to Elk Ridge," he answered, handing him the money and
+quickly starting on. Then he pulled his horse up with a sudden jerk.
+"Here, Chadwick," he called, pitching the heavy overcoat he carried on
+his arm in the direction of the porch, "I wish you'd keep this for me
+until I get back. I'll be along this way before dark, and it's so much
+warmer than I thought it would be that such a heavy coat is a nuisance."
+
+"All right," responded the toll-keeper. "Here! John Jay," he ordered, as
+the doctor disappeared around the bend in the road, "pick up the
+gentleman's coat and hang it on a chair inside the door there." Then he
+stuck his hands in his pockets, and whistling to his dog, walked off
+across the fields.
+
+George turned to the child again. "John Jay," he said, "do you know that
+I'm going away soon?" Without waiting for an answer, he hurried on, lest
+another spell of coughing should interrupt him. "When I was a little
+fellow like you I heard so much about spirits and graveyards and haunted
+places that I had a horror of dying. I could not think of it without a
+shiver. But I've found out that death isn't a cold, ugly thing, my boy,
+and I want you to remember all your life every word I'm saying to you
+now. There is nothing to dread in simply going down this road and
+through the gate as Doctor Leonard did, and death is no more than that.
+We just go down the turnpike till we get to the end of this life, and
+then there's the toll-gate. We lay down our old worn-out bodies, just as
+Doctor Leonard left his coat here, because he wouldn't need it farther
+up the road. Then the bar flies up and lets us through. It drops so
+quickly that no one ever sees what lies on the other side, but we know
+that there is neither sorrow nor crying beyond it, nor any more pain.
+Listen, John Jay, this is what the Book tells us."
+
+With fingers that trembled in his eagerness to make himself understood,
+he lifted the volume that had been lying in his lap. The words that he
+read vibrated through the child's heart in the way that the organ music
+used to roll. Never again in the years that followed could he hear them
+read without seeing all the golden glory of that radiant October day,
+and hearing the mournful notes of some distant dove, falling at
+intervals through the Sabbath-like stillness.
+
+He had a queer conception of what lies beyond the gates of this life. It
+was a curious jumble of crowns and harps and long, white-feathered
+wings. Mammy's favorite song said, "There's milk an' honey in heaven, I
+know;" and Aunt Susan often lifted up her cracked voice in the refrain,
+"Oh, them golden slippahs I'm agwine to wear, when Gabriel blows his
+trum-pet!" How Uncle Billy could sigh for the time to come when he might
+walk the shining pavements was beyond John Jay's understanding.
+Personally, he preferred the freedom of the neighboring woods and the
+pleasure of digging in the dirt to all the white robes and crowns that
+might be laid up somewhere in the skies.
+
+But when George had finished reading, John Jay was not gazing into the
+clouds for a glimpse of the city to which his friend was going; he was
+looking down the road. Crowned with all their autumn glory, the far
+hills stood up fair and golden in the westering sun. It was to some
+place just as real and beautiful as the hills he looked upon that George
+was going, not a crowded street with an endless procession of singing,
+white-robed figures. A far country, under whose waving trees health and
+strength would be given back to him. No, dying was not a cold, ugly
+thing.
+
+"_They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee
+away!_"
+
+George closed the book, and leaning wearily back in the chair, drew his
+hand over his eyes. "I want you to promise me one thing, John Jay," he
+said. "That when I am gone you will think of what I am telling you now,
+and when the colored people all gather around to see this tired body of
+mine laid aside, you'll remember Dr. Leonard's coat, and you'll say,
+'George has left his behind too. He isn't here, but he's just on the
+other side of the toll-gate.' Will you do that, John Jay?"
+
+There was a frightened look in the boy's eyes. He had no words
+wherewith to answer him, but he nodded an assent as he went on nervously
+tossing the acorns from one hand to another.
+
+There was a long silence, and when he looked up inquiringly, George had
+put his thin hands over his face to hide the tears that were slowly
+trickling down.
+
+"What's the mattah?" he asked anxiously. "Shall I call Mars' Nat?"
+
+"No," answered the man, steadying his voice. "I was only thinking that I
+had expected to go through the gate, when my turn came, with my arms
+piled full of sheaves,--but I've come to the end too soon. It seems so
+hard to come down to death empty-handed, when I have longed all these
+years to do so much for my people. Oh, my poor people!" he cried out
+desperately; "so helpless and so needy, and my life that was to have
+been given to them going out in vain! utterly in vain!"
+
+It was not the first time that John Jay had heard that cry. In these
+weeks of constant companionship George had talked so much of his hopes
+and plans, that a faint spark of that same ambition had begun to
+smoulder slowly in the boy's ignorant little heart. Six months ago he
+could have had no understanding of such a grief as now made George's
+voice to tremble; but love had opened his eyes to many things, and made
+his sympathies keen. He drew nearer, saying almost in a whisper: "But
+Uncle Billy says you fought a good fight while you was gettin' ready to
+help us cul'ud folks, an' if you got so knocked up you can't do nothin'
+moah, maybe 'twon't be expected as you should have yo' hands full when
+you go through the gates. You've got yo' scars to show for what you've
+done."
+
+George lifted up his head. There was an eager light in his eyes, not so
+much because of the comfort that had come from such an unexpected
+quarter, as because of a new hope that the words suggested. He lifted
+the boy's chin with a trembling hand, and looked wistfully into his
+eyes.
+
+"You could do it, couldn't you?" he asked. "All that I must leave
+undone? The struggle would not be so great for you. There are schools
+near at hand now. You would not have the fearful odds to contend with
+that I had. _Will_ you take up my battle? Shall I leave you my sword,
+John Jay? Oh, you _do_ understand me, don't you?" he cried, imploringly.
+
+"Yes, I understand," answered the boy. Then, as if George had really
+placed an epaulet upon his shoulder, as if he had really given him a
+sword, he drew a long breath and said with all the solemnity of a
+promise: "Some day Uncle Billy shall say that about me, 'He have fought
+a good fight,--he have finished his co'se.'"
+
+[Illustration: Swords]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Tollgate (up)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+It came to pass as George had said. One cold, rainy day when the wind
+rustled the fallen leaves and sighed through all the bare branches, he
+came haltingly up to the end of his lonely pilgrimage. It was given to
+little John Jay to hold his hand and look into his eyes as Death swung
+up the bar and bade him pass on.
+
+A wondering smile flitted across the beloved face; then that mysterious
+silence that bars all sight and speech fell between the freed spirit
+hastening up the eternal highway and the trembling boy left sobbing
+behind.
+
+Mars' Nat turned away with tears in his eyes and looked out of the
+window. "Through thick and thin, he's the one soul who loved me and
+believed in me," he said, in a half whisper. "His poor, black hands
+have upheld the old family standards and ideals far more faithfully than
+mine, both in his slavery and his freedom."
+
+Because of this there was no grave made for George in the forsaken
+shadow of Brier Crook church. He was given a place on the hill, beside
+the Chadwicks, whose name he had borne unsullied, and to whose honor he
+had been proudly loyal.
+
+"That was a gran' funeral occasion, sis' Sheba," exclaimed Aunt Susan,
+as she took off the rusty crape veil that had served at the funerals of
+two generations. "I reckon every cul'ud person around heah was present.
+Three ministahs a helpin', an' fo'teen white families sendin' flowahs
+with their cards on isn't to be seen every day in the yeah. I wouldn't
+have missed it for anything."
+
+"No, indeed," answered Mammy, with a mournful shake of the head. "Dyin'
+would be somethin' to look forwa'ds to if we could all hope for such a
+buryin' as that. But I'm beat about John Jay. He do seem so onfeelin'.
+He loved that man bettah than anything on this yearth, an' I s'posed
+he'd take his death mighty hard; but what you reckon he said to me this
+mawnin'. I was i'onin' my black aidged handkerchief to take, when he
+says to me, sezee, 'What you want to put on mo'nin' for Rev'und Gawge
+for? He said to tell you all that he jus' gone through the toll-gate.'"
+
+"You don't tell me!" exclaimed Aunt Susan. "That sut'n'ly sounds
+on-natchel in a chile like him."
+
+"Yes," continued Mammy, "I haven't seen him shed a tear. He jus' wandahs
+around the yard, same as if nothin' had happened, and nevah says a word
+about it."
+
+[Illustration: Sat alone by the church steps]
+
+She did not know how many times he slipped away from the other children
+and sat alone by the church steps, where he had so often listened to
+George's vesper melodies. She did not know what mournful cadences of
+memory thrilled him, as he rocked himself back and forth among the dead
+weeds, with his arms around his knees and his head bowed on them. She
+knew nothing of the music that had sung wordless longings into his
+simple child-heart until it awakened answering voices of a deathless
+ambition. So her surprise knew no bounds when he came slowly into the
+cabin one evening, and asked if he might be allowed to start to
+school the following week.
+
+"Law, chile!" she answered. "They isn't any school for cul'ud folks
+less'n a mile an' a half away, an' besides, you hasn't clothes fitten to
+wear. The scholars would all laugh at you."
+
+Still he persisted. "What put such a notion in yo' head, anyhow?" she
+demanded.
+
+John Jay turned his face aside, and busied himself with taking another
+reef in his suspenders. "The Rev'und Gawge wanted me to go," he said, in
+a low tone. "Besides, how can I know what all's in the books he done
+left me 'thout I learn to read?"
+
+"That's so," assented Mammy, looking proudly at the shelves now
+ornamenting one corner of the little cabin with George's well-worn
+school-books. Most of the volumes were upside down, because her
+untutored eyes knew no better than to replace them so, when she took
+them out to dust them with loving care. They were George's greatest
+treasures, and she allowed no one to touch them, not even John Jay, to
+whom they had been left.
+
+"What does a little niggah like him want of schoolin'," she had once
+said to Uncle Billy, when he had proposed sending the boy to school to
+keep him out of mischief. "Why, that John Jay he hasn't got any mo' mind
+than a grasshoppah. All he knows how to do is jus' to keep on a jumpin'.
+No, brer Billy, it would be a pure waste of good education to spend it
+on anybody like him."
+
+John Jay had always cheerfully agreed with this opinion, which she never
+hesitated to express in his hearing. He had had no desire to give up his
+unlettered liberty until that day on the haymow when he had his
+awakening. Having heard Mammy's opinion so often, it was no wonder that
+he kept his head turned bashfully aside, and stumbled over his words
+when he timidly made his request. It was the sight of George's books
+that gave him courage to persist, and it was the sight of the books that
+decided Mammy's answer. She could remember the time when Jintsey's boy
+had been almost as light-headed and light-hearted as John Jay; so it was
+not past belief that even John Jay might settle down in time.
+
+The thought that he might some day be able to read the books that George
+had pored over, and that, possibly, some time in the far future he
+might be fitted to preach the gospel George had proclaimed, aroused all
+her grandmotherly pride. Some fragment of a half-forgotten sermon
+floated through her mind as she looked on the ragged little fellow
+standing before her.
+
+"The mantle of the prophet 'Lijah done fell on his servant 'Lisha," she
+muttered under her breath. "What if the mantle of Gawge Chadwick have
+been left to my poah Ellen's boy, 'long with them books?"
+
+John Jay was balancing himself on one foot, while he drew the toes of
+the other along a crack in the floor between the puncheons, anxiously
+awaiting her decision. Not knowing what was passing through her mind, he
+was not prepared for the abrupt change in both her speech and manner. He
+almost lost his balance when she suddenly gave her consent; but,
+regaining it quickly, he tumbled through the door, giving vent to his
+delight in a series of whoops that made Mammy's head ring, and brought
+her to the door, scolding crossly.
+
+A few minutes later, a dusky little figure crept through the gloaming,
+and rustled softly through the leaves lying on the path. Resting his
+arms on the fence, he looked across the dim fields to the darkly
+outlined tree-tops of the hill beyond.
+
+"I wondah if he knows that I'm keepin' my promise," he whispered. "I
+wondah if he knows I'm tryin' to follow him."
+
+Over the churchyard hill the new moon swung its slender crescent of
+light, and into its silvery wake there trembled out of the darkness a
+shining star.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The roadside ditches are covered with ice, these cold winter mornings.
+The ruts in the muddy pike are frozen as hard as stone. John Jay
+shuffles along in his big shoes on his way to school, out at the toes
+and out at his elbows; but there is a broad smile all over his bright
+little face. Wherever he can find a strip of ice to slide across, he
+goes with a rush and a whoop. Sometimes there is only a raw turnip and a
+piece of corn pone in his pocket for dinner. His feet and fingers are
+always numb with cold by the time he reaches the school house, but his
+eyes still shine, and his whistle never loses its note of cheeriness.
+
+There are whippings and scoldings in the schoolhouse, just as there have
+always been whippings and scoldings in the cabin; for no sooner is he
+thawed out after his long walk, than he begins to be the worry of his
+teacher's life, as he was the torment of Mammy's. It is not that he
+means to make trouble. Despite his many blunders into mischief, he is
+always at the head of his class, for he has a motive for hard study that
+the other pupils know nothing of.
+
+Every evening Bud and Ivy watch for his home-coming with eager faces
+flattened against the cabin window, lit up by the red glare of the
+sunset. They see him come running up the road, snapping his cold
+fingers, and turning occasional handsprings into the snow-drifts in the
+fence corners.
+
+Just before he comes whistling up the path with his face twisted into
+all sorts of ugly grimaces to make them laugh, he stops at the gate a
+moment. Do they wonder what he always sees across those snowy fields, as
+he stands and looks away towards Mars' Nat's cottage and the white
+churchyard on the hill?
+
+Ah, Bud and Ivy have not had their awakening; but the little brother and
+sister are not the only ones who fail to see more than the surface of
+John Jay's nature. Under the bubbles of his gay animal spirits runs the
+deep current of a strong purpose, and in these moments he is keeping
+silent tryst with a memory. He thinks of his promise, and his heart goes
+out to his Reverend George on the other side of the toll-gate.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Tollgate (down)]
+
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+   Page 51 Briar Crook church changed to Brier Crook church for
+   consistency.
+
+   All other spelling as found in original.
+
+   Descriptions added to illustrations without captions.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLE MAMMY'S TORMENT***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17497.txt or 17497.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/9/17497
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+