"It isn't a fit night for her to be out, and
I'll go after her at once."
He took up his lantern, and as the old negro opened the doors before him,
went out upon the back porch and down the steps.
From the steps a narrow path ran by the kitchen, and skirting the
garden-wall, straggled through the orchard and past the house of the
overseer to the big barn and the cabins in the quarters. There was a light
from the barn door, and as he passed he heard the sound of fiddles and the
shuffling steps of the field hands in a noisy "game." The words they sang
floated out into the night, and with the squeaking of the fiddles followed
him along his path.
When he reached the quarters, he went from door to door, asking for his
wife. "Is this Mahaley's cabin?" he anxiously inquired, "and has your
mistress gone by?"
In the first room an old negro woman sat on the hearth wrapping the hair of
her grandchild, and she rose with a courtesy and a smile of welcome. At the
question her face fell and she shook her head.
"Dis yer ain' Mahaley, Marster," she replied. "En dis yer ain' Mahaley's
cabin--caze Mahaley she ain' never set foot inside my do', en I ain' gwine
set foot at her buryin'." She spoke shrilly, moved by a hidden spite, but
the Governor, without stopping, went on along the line of open doors. In
one a field negro was roasting chestnuts in the embers of a log fire, and
while waiting he had fallen asleep, with his head on his breast and his
gnarled hands hanging between his knees.
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