Alf was still asleep when I arose from my bed the next morning. I stood at the head of the stairs and looked back at his handsome, though sun-browned face, and I felt a strange and strong sympathy for him, but I had not begun to agonize in my love; it was so new that I was dazzled. When I went down stairs Guinea was feeding the chickens from the kitchen window, and the old man was walking about the yard, with his slouch hat pulled down to shut out the slanting glare of the sun. But he saw me and, calling me, said that he would now show me his beauties. And just then I heard Guinea’s voice: “If he starts to make them fight you come right away and leave him, Mr. Hawes,” she said. “We don’t allow him to fight them on Sunday.”

“Miss Smartjacket,” the old man spoke up, “I hadn’t said a word about makin’ ’em fight. Hawes, these women folks don’t want a man to have no fun at all. As long as a man is at work it’s all right with the women; they can stand to see him delve till he drops, but the minit he wants to have a little fun, why, they begin to mowl about it. Of course, I’m not goin’ to let ’em fight on Sunday. But a preacher would eat one of ’em on Sunday. All days belong to ’em. It’s die dog or eat the hatchet when they come round. And yet, as I tell you, I believe in the Book from kiver to kiver. Step out here, Hawes.”

I thought that I received from Guinea a smile of assent, and I followed him. The enclosure wherein he kept his chickens was almost as strong as a “stockade.” The old man unfastened a padlock and bade me enter. I stepped inside, and when the master had followed me he was greeted with many a cluck and scratching, the welcome of two game cocks in a wire coop, divided into two apartments by a solid board partition. “I jest wanted you to look at ’em and size ’em merely for your own satisfaction,” said the old man, fondly looking upon his shimmering pets. “This red one over here is Sam, and that dominecker rascal is Bob. Ah, Lord, you don’t know what comfort there is in a chicken, and how a preacher can eat a game rooster is beyond my understandin’. But I’m with him, you understand, from kiver to kiver. Keep quiet there, boys; no fight to-day. Must have some respect, you know.”

He took a grain of corn from his pocket, placed it between his teeth, and with a grin on his face got down on his knees and held his mouth near the bars of Sam’s cage. The rooster plucked out the grain of corn, and Bob, watching the performance, began to prance about in jealous rage. “Never you mind, Bob,” said the old man, getting up and dusting his knees. “I know your tricks. Held one out to you that way not long ago, and I wish I may never stir agin if you didn’t take a crack at my eye, and if I hadn’t ducked I’d be one-eyed right now. But they are callin’ us to breakfust. Bound to interfere with a man one way or another.”

It was with great care that Alf prepared himself to go with me to the General’s house. Out under a tree in the yard he placed a mirror on a chair and there he sat and shaved himself. Then he went upstairs to put on a suit of clothes which never had been worn, and anon I heard him calling his mother to help him find buttons and neckwear that had been misplaced. And he shouted to me not to be impatient, that he was doing the best he could. Impatient! I was sitting in the passage, leaning back against the wall, and near the steps Guinea stood, looking far out over the ravine. She had donned a garb of bright calico, with long, green-stemmed flowers stamped upon it, and I thought that of all the dresses I had ever beheld this was the most beautiful and becoming. She hummed a tune and looking about pretended to be surprised to see me sitting there, and for aught I know the astonishment might have been real, for I had made no noise in placing my chair against the wall.

“I ought not to be humming a dance tune on Sunday,” she said, stepping back and standing against the opposite wall, with her hands behind her.

“I don’t see how the day can make music harmful,” I replied.

“The day can’t make music harmful,” she rejoined. “But I can’t sing. Sometimes when I can’t express what I am thinking about I hum it. How long are you and Alf going to be away?”

“As long as it suits him,” I answered. “I have decided to have no voice as to the length of our stay.”

“Then you are simply going to accommodate him. How kind of you. And have you always so much consideration for others? If you have you may find your patience strained if you stay here.”

“To stand any strain that may be placed upon our patience is a virtue,” I remarked sententious pedagogue and she lifted her hands, clasped them behind her head, looked at me and laughed, a music sweet and low. Just then Alf came out upon the passage, looking down at himself, first one side and then the other; and it was with a feeling of close kinship to envy that I regarded his new clothes. He apologized for having kept me waiting so long, but in truth I could have told him that I should have liked to wait there for hours, looking at the graceful figure of that girl, standing with her hands clasped behind her brown head.

The distance was not great and we had decided to walk, and across a meadow, purpling with coming bloom, we took a nearer way. I said to Alf that one might think that he was a stranger at the General’s house, and he replied: “In one way I am. I have been there many a time, it is true, but always to help do something.”

“Is the family so exclusive, then?” I asked.

“Oh, they are as friendly as any people you ever saw, but, of course, I naturally place them high above me. The old General doesn’t appear to know that I have grown to be a man; always talks to me as if I were a boy wants to know what father’s doing and all that sort of thing. He doesn’t give a snap what father’s doing.”

“And the girl. How does she talk to you?” It was several moments before he answered me.

“I was just trying to think,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how she talks to me. I can’t recall anything she has ever said to me. She calls me Alf and I call her Miss Millie, and we laugh at some fool thing and that’s about all there is to it. But I know that the old man would never be willing for me to marry her. He is looking pretty high for her or he wouldn’t have spent so much money on her education.”

“But, of course, the girl will have something to say,” I suggested.

“I don’t know as to that,” he replied; “but, of course, I hope so. You can’t tell about girls at least, I can’t. The old General married rather late in life and has but two children. His wife died several years ago. Chydister, the boy, or, rather, the man for he’s about my age is off at a medical college. He doesn’t strike me as being so alfired smart, but they say that he’s got learning away up in G. The old man says that he is going to make him the best doctor in the whole country, if colleges can do it, and I reckon they can. He and I have always got along pretty well; he used to stay at our house a good deal.”

We crossed the creek, by leaping from one stone to another, and pursued a course along a rotting rail fence, covered with vines. And from over in the low ground came the “sqush” of the cows as they strode through the rank and sappy clover. We crossed a hill whereon stood a deserted negro “quarter” the moldering mark of a life that is now dreamy and afar off and after crossing another valley slowly ascended the rounding bulge of ground, capped by the home of the General. Alf had begun to falter and hang back, and when I sought gently to encourage him he remarked: “But you must remember that this is the first time that I have ever been here with new clothes on, and I want to tell you that this makes a big difference.”

“It has been some time since I went anywhere with new clothes on,” I replied, which set him laughing; but his merriment was shut off when I opened the gate. Behind the house, where the ground sloped toward the orchard, there were a number of cabins, old, but not deserted, for negro children were playing about the doors and from somewhere within came the low drone of a half-religious, half-cornshucking melody. An old dog got up from under a tree, but, repenting of the exertion, lay down again; a turkey loudly gobbled, a peacock croaked, and a tall, bulky, old man came out upon the porch.

“Walk right in,” he called, and shouting back into the hallway he commanded some one to bring out three chairs. And even before we had ascended the stone steps the command had been obeyed by a negro boy. “Glad to meet you, sir,” he said when Alf had introduced me. “You have come to teach the school, I believe. Old man Perdue was over and told me about it. Sit down. What’s your father doing, Alf?”

“Can’t do anything to-day,” Alf answered, glancing at me.

“I suppose not. All the folks well? Glad to hear it,” he added before Alf could answer him. “It’s been pretty wet, but it’s drying up all right.”

He wore a dressing gown, befigured with purple gourds, was bare-headed and I thought that he wore a wig, for his hair was thick and was curled under at the back of his neck. His face, closely shaved, was full and red; his lips were thick and his mouth was large. I could see that he was of immense importance, a dominant spirit of the Old South, and my reading told me that his leading ancestor had come to America as the master of a Virginia plantation.

“Henry!” the old General called. “Fetch me my pipe. Henry!”

“Comin’,” a voice cried from within. His pipe was brought and when it had been lighted with a coal which Henry carried in the palm of his hand, rolling it about from side to side, the General puffed for a few moments and then, looking at me, asked if I found school-teaching to be a very profitable employment.

“The money part of it has been but of minor consideration,” I answered. “My aim is to become a lawyer, and I am teaching school to help me toward that end.”

He cleared his throat with a loud rasp. “I remember,” said he, “that a man came here once from the North with pretty much the same idea. It was before the war. We got him up a school, and by the black ooze in the veins of old Satan, it wasn’t long before he was trying to persuade the negroes to run away from us. I had a feather bed that wasn’t in use at the time, and old Mills over here had a first-rate article of tar on hand, and when we got through with the gentleman he looked like an arctic explorer. Where are you from, sir?”

I told him, and then he asked: “The name is all right, and the location is good. My oldest brother knew a Captain Hawes in the Creek war.”

“He was my grandfather,” I replied. He looked at me, still pulling at his pipe, and said: “Then, sir, I am, indeed, glad to see you. Alf, what’s your father doing?”

“Nothing, sir; it’s Sunday,” Alf answered, blushing. The old General looked at him, cleared his throat and said: “Yes, yes. Folks all well?”

I heard the door open and close and I saw Alf move, even as his father had moved when he came upon me in the road. I heard light foot-falls in the hall, and then out stepped a girl. She smiled and nodded at Alf and the General introduced me to her. Alf got up, almost tumbled out of his chair and asked her to sit down. “Oh, no, keep your seat,” she said. “I’m not going to stay but a minute.” She walked over to a post and, leaning against it, turned and looked back at us. She wore a flower in her hair, and in her hand she held a calacanthus bud. She was rather small, with a petulant sort of beauty, but I did not think that she could be compared with Guinea, for all of Alf’s raving over her. Her cheeks were dimpled, and well she knew it, for she smiled whenever anything was said, and when no word had been spoken she smiled at the silence.

“Alf, what has become of Guinea?” she asked. “It seems an age since I saw her.”

“She was over here last, I think,” Alf answered.

“Ahem m ” came from the General. “You’ll be counting meals on each other, like the Yankees, after a while,” he said. “Why don’t you quit your foolishness; and if you want to see each other, go and see. I don’t know what your feelings are in the matter, sir,” he added, turning to me, “but I don’t see much good in this so-called public school system. And of all worthless things under heaven it is a negro that has caught up a smattering of education. God knows he’s trifling enough at best, but teach him to read and he’s utterly worthless. I sent a negro to the postoffice some time ago, and he came along back with my newspaper spread out before him, reading it on the horse. And if it hadn’t been for Millie I would have ripped the hide off him.”

“He didn’t know any better,” the girl spoke up. “Poor thing, you scared him nearly to death.”

“Yes, and I immediately gave him the best coat I had to square myself, not with him, but with myself,” said the old man. “But I hold that if the negro, or anyone else, for that matter, is to be a servant, let him be a servant. I don’t want a man to plow for me simply because he can read. Confound him, I don’t care whether he can read or not. I want him to plow. When I choose my friends it is another matter. Your father go to church to-day, Alf?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Alf answered, moving about in his chair, and then in his embarrassment he got up and stammeringly begged the girl to sit down.

“Why, what’s all this trouble and nonsense about,” the General asked, looking first at the girl and then at Alf. “’Öd zounds, there oughtn’t to be any trouble about a chair. Fifty of them back in there.”

Alf dropped back and the girl laughed with such genuine heartiness that I thought much better of her, but still I did not think that she was at all to be compared with Guinea. The General yelled for Henry to bring him another coal, and when his pipe had been relighted he turned to me and said: “You don’t find the old North State as she once was, sir. Ah, Lord, the ruin that has gone on in this world since I can remember. And yet they say we are becoming more civilized. Zounds, sir, do you call it civilization to see hundreds of fields turned out to persimmon bushes and broom sedge? Look over there,” he added, waving his hand. “I have seen the time when that was almost a garden. What do you want?” The last remark was addressed to the negro boy who had suddenly appeared. “Dinner? Yes, yes. Come, Mr. Hawes, and you, Alf. This way. Get out!” A dog had come between him and the door. “Devilish dogs are about to take the place, but they are no account, not one of them. Lie around here and let the rabbits eat up the pea vines. Even the dogs have degenerated along with everything else.”

I walked with the General, and, looking back, I was pleased to see that Alf had summoned courage enough to follow along beside the girl. We were shown into a long dining-room, with a great height of ceiling. The house had been built in a proud old day, and all about me I noted a dim and faded elegance. The General bade us sit down, and I noticed that his tone was softened. He mumbled a blessing over a great hunk of mutton and, broadly smiling upon me, told me that he was glad to welcome me to his board. “The school-teacher,” said he, “modifies and refines our native crudeness. Yes, sir, you have a great work, a work that you may be proud of. Had education more broadly prevailed, had the people North and South better understood one another, there would have been no bloody disruption. Now, gentlemen, I must request you to help yourselves, remembering that such as I have is freely yours. When age comes on apace there is nothing more inspiring than to see the young and the vigorous gathered about us. And it is thus that the evening of live is brightened. Henry, pass the bread to Mr. Jucklin, and the peas, the very first of this backward season, I assure you. Mr. Hawes, can you recall the face of your noble grandfather?”

“No, General; he died many years before I can remember.”

“A pity, I assure you, for what is more spurring to our ambition than to recall the features of a noted relative. Some of this lettuce, Mr. Hawes? A sleepy, but withal a soothing, dish. My daughter, I must request you to help yourself. Charming weather we have, Mr. Hawes, with the essence of youth and hope in the air.”

How completely had his manner changed. His eyes, which had seemed hard and cold when he had waved his hand and looked out over the yellow sedge grass, were beaming now with kindly light, and his voice, which I had thought was coarse and gruff, was vibrant with notes of stirring sympathy. Alf, heartened by the old gentleman’s streaming courtesy, spoke a low word to the girl who sat beside him, and she nodded, smiling, but with one ear politely lent to the familiar talk of her father.

After dinner we were shown into the library, wherein were many law books, and the General, catching the longing glance that I shot at them, turned with bewitching patronage, bowed and said:

“You have expressed your determination to become acquainted with the law and to practice the wiles of its logic; and so, if you can make no better arrangements, I pray, sir, that you make this room your office.”

Alf’s eyes bulged out at this, doubtless looking upon me as the most fortunate man alive, and in my country bluntness I blurted: “You are the kindest man I ever saw.”

In this room we talked for two hours or more, and the afternoon or the evening, as we say in the South was well pronounced when I declared that it was time for us to go. Alf looked up surprised, and in a voice sad with appeal, he asked if it were very late. I could have given him the exact time, but was afraid to take out my grandfather’s watch afraid that the General and his daughter might think that I was seeking to make a display, so I simply said: “Yes, time that we were going.”

“Don’t be in a hurry, gentlemen,” the General protested; “don’t let a trivial matter rob us of your society.”

Alf pulled back, but I insisted, and so we took our leave. The old gentleman came out upon the porch with us. “Henry!” he yelled, turning about, “who the devil left that gate open? Go and shut it, you lazy scoundrel. Those infamous new-comers over on the creek take my place for a public highway. And I hope to be hung up by the heels if I don’t fill the last one of them full of shot.”

“I’ll never forget you,” Alf remarked as we walked along, down through the meadow. “You have stood by me, and you bet your life I don’t forget such things. Of course, I have known the old man ever since I can remember, but he never treated me so well before. And when the time comes, if I can get him in that dining-room I don’t believe he’ll refuse me. It’s a blamed big pity that I can’t talk as you can, but you just stick to me and I will talk all right after a while.”

“Oh, I’ll stick to you,” I replied, “but I didn’t notice that I talked in a way to amount to anything. I felt as stupid as an ass looks. What did the girl say? You were talking to her very earnestly over by the window.”

“To save my life, I can’t recall anything she said, Bill, but I know that every word she spoke was dripped honey. I’d almost give my life to take her in my arms and hug her just once. Ever feel that way about a girl?”

I was beginning to feel just exactly that way, but I told him no, whereupon he said: “But you may one of these days, and whenever you do, you call on me to help you, and I’ll do it, I don’t care who the girl is or how high up she may stand. Many a night I have lain in bed and wished that Millie might be going along the road by herself and that about three men would come up and say something out of the way to her, just so I could spring out and wipe the face of the earth with them. I’m not as big as you are, but for her I’ll bet I can whip any three men you ever saw. By the way, don’t even speak Millie’s name at home. The folks don’t know that I’m in love with her. There’s one thing that stands in my favor.”

“What is it?” I asked. He looked up at me, but was silent, and becoming interested by his manner I was about to repeat the question, when he said: “I’m not at liberty to speak of it yet. You’ve noticed that Guinea has more education than I have. Well, her education has something to do with the point that’s in my favor, but I’ve said too much already and we’d better drop the subject.”

I was burning to know more, for I recalled the change of manner that had come over Mr. Jucklin at the time he spoke of having sent his daughter away to school, and I was turning this over and over in my mind, when Alf said: “A young fellow named Dan Stuart often goes to see Millie, and I don’t know how much she thinks of him, but some of his people are high flyers, and that may have an influence in his favor. Doc Etheredge, out here, is his cousin, and old man Etheredge owned nearly a hundred and fifty negroes at one time. But when that girl stands up at the altar to marry some one else, they will find me there putting in my protest.”

When we reached home I found Guinea sitting under a tree, reading, and I had joined her when the old man called me. Looking about I saw him standing at the end of the house, beckoning to me. “I want to see you a minute,” he said, as I approached him. I wondered whether he was again going to show me his chickens, and it was a relief when he conducted me in an opposite direction. He looked back to see if we were far enough away, and then, coming closer to me, he said: “This is the way I came to do it.”

“Do what?” I asked, not over pleased that he should have called upon me to leave the girl.

“Wallow him, the old General. He claimed that my hogs had been gettin’ into his field, and I told him that I didn’t feel disposed to keep my hogs up when everybody else’s were runnin’ at large, and then he called me a scoundrel and we clinched. I took him so quick that he wasn’t prepared for me, and I give a sort of a hem stich and down he went, right in the middle of the road. And there I was right on top of him. He didn’t say a word, while I was wallowin’ him, but when I let him up, he looked all round and then said: ’Lim Jucklin, if I thought anybody was lookin’ I’d kill you right here. You are the first man that ever wallowed a Lundsford and lived, and the novelty of the thing sorter appeals to me. You know that I’m not afraid of the devil, and keep your mouth shut about this affair, and we’ll let it drap.’ And he meant just what he said, and I did keep my mouth shut, not because I was afraid of his hurtin’ me, but because I was sorry to humiliate him. Ever hear of John Mortimer Lacey? Well, shortly after that him and Lundsford fit a duel and Lacey went to New Orleans and died there. So, don’t say anything about it.”

“About what? Lacey’s going to New Orleans and dying there?”

“No, cadfound it all, about my wallerin’ the General.”

“I won’t,” I answered, and then I thought to touch upon a question that had taken a fast hold upon me. “By the way, you spoke of having sent your daughter to school at Raleigh ”

“The devil I did! Well, what’s that got to do with you or with anyone else, for that matter? I’ll be you must excuse me, sir,” he quickly added, bowing. “I’m not right bright in my mind at times. Pecked right at my eye, and if I hadn’t dodged I’d be one-eyed this minute yes, I would, as sure as you are born. But here, let us drop that wallowin’ business and that other affair with it, and not mention it again. Don’t know why I done it in the first place, but I reckon it was because I’m not right bright in my mind at times. You’ll excuse my snap and snarl, won’t you? Go on back there, now, and talk about your books.”

“I am the one to ask pardon, Mr. Jucklin. I ought to have had better sense than to touch upon something that didn’t concern me. I guess there must be a good deal of the brute in me, and it seems to me that I spend nearly half my time regretting what I did the other half.”

“Why, Lord love your soul, man, you haven’t done nothin’. But you draw me close to you when you talk of regrettin’ things. I have spent nearly all my life in putty much that fix. After you’ve lived in this neighborhood a while you’ll hear that old Lim has been in many a fight, but you’ll never hear that anybody has ever whupped him. You may hear, though, that he has rid twenty mile of a cold night to beg the pardon of a man that he had thrashed. We’ll shake hands right here, and if you say the word we’ll go right now and make them chickens fight. No, it’s Sunday. Kiver to kiver, you understand. Go on back there, now.”

With Guinea I sat and saw the sun go down behind a yellow gullied hill. From afar up and down the valley came the lonesome “pig-oo-ee!” of the farmers, calling their hogs for the evening’s feed. We heard the flutter of the chickens, flying to roost, and the night hawk heard them, too, for his eager, hungry scream pierced the still air. On a smooth old rock at the verge of the ravine the girl’s brother stood, arms folded, looking out over the darkening low land, and from within the house, where Mrs. Jucklin sat alone, there came a sad melody: “Come, thou fount of every blessing.”

The girl’s eyes were upward turned. “Every evening comes with a new mystery,” she said. “We think we know what to expect, but when the evening comes it is different from what it was yesterday.”

“And it is thus that we are enabled to live without growing tired of the world and of ourselves,” I replied. “And I wish that I had come like the evening with a mystery,” I added.

I heard her musical cluck and even in the dusk I could see the light of her smile. “But why should you want to come with a mystery?” she asked.

“To inspire those about me with an interest regarding me. Even the stray dog is more interesting than the dog that is vouched for by the appearance of his master. I never saw a pack-peddler that I did not long to know something of his life, his emotions, the causes that sent him adrift, but I can’t find this interest in a man whom I understand.”

She laughed again. “But haven’t you some little mystery connected with your life?” she asked.

“None. I have read myself into a position a few degrees above the clod-hopper, but that’s all. If there were a war, I would be a soldier, but as there is no war, I am going to be a lawyer.”

“It would be nice, I should think, to stand up and make speeches,” she said. “But wouldn’t you rather be a doctor?”

I don’t know why I said it, but I replied that I hated doctors, and she did not laugh at this, but was silent. I waited for her to say something, but she uttered not a word. It was now dark, and I could just discern Alf’s figure, standing on the rock. The song in the house was hushed.

“I don’t really mean that I hate doctors,” I said, seeking to right myself, if, indeed, I had made a mistake; and she simply replied: “Oh.” “I mean that I should not like to practice medicine,” I added, and again she said: “Oh.” A lamp had been lighted in the sitting-room, and thither we went, to join Old Lim and his wife, who were warm in the discussion of a religious question. The Book said that whatever a man’s hands found to do he must do, and, therefore, he held that it was right to do almost anything on Sunday.

“Even unto the fighting of chickens?” his wife asked.

“Oh, I knowed what you was a-gittin’ at. Knowed it while you was a-beatin’ the bush all round. When a woman begins to beat the bush, it’s time to look out, Mr. Hawes. I came in here just now, and I knowed in a minute that wife, there, was goin’ to accuse me of havin’ a round with Sam and Bob, but I pledge you my word that I didn’t. Just went in and exchanged a few words with ’em. Man’s got a right to talk to his friends, I reckon; but if he ain’t, w’y, it’s time to shut up shop.”

Alf came in and, with Guinea, sang an old song, and their father sat there with the tears shining in his eyes. He leaned over, and I heard him whisper to his wife: “Did have just a mild bit of a round, Susan, and I hope that you and the Lord will forgive me for it. If you do I know the Lord will. I’m an old liar, Susan.”

“No, you are not, Lemuel,” she answered, in a low voice. “You are the best man in the world, and everybody loves you.”

I saw him squeeze her wrinkled hand.

I could not sleep, but in a strange disturbance tossed about. Alf was talking in a dream. I got up and sat for a time at the window, looking out toward the gullied hill that had turned out the light of the sun. On the morrow my work was to begin. And what was to be the result? Was it intended that I should reach the bar and win renown, or had I been listed for the life of a pedagogue? Was my love for the girl so new that it dazzled me? No, it was now a passion, wounded and sore. But why? By that little word, “Oh.” I put on my clothes, tip-toed down stairs and walked about the yard. The moon was full, low above the scrub oaks. A streak of shimmering light ran down toward the spring, and over it I slowly strode. I heard the water gurgling from under the moss-covered spring-house, and I saw the leaf-shadow patch-work moving to and fro over the smooth slabs of stone. Long I stood there, looking at the pictures, listening to the music; and turning back toward the house, I had gone some distance when I chanced to look up, and then, thrilled, I slowly sank upon my knees. At one of the large windows, in the northeast end of the house, stood Guinea, in a loose, white robe, the light of the full moon falling upon her. Behind her head her hands were clasped, and she stood there like a marble cross. Her face was upward turned, and the low yellow moon was bronzing her brown hair a glorified marble cross, with a crown of gold, I thought, as I bowed in my worship. My forehead touched the path, and when I lifted my head the cross was gone.