iches were to be gathered there.

Down a piece, abreast the house, stood a little log cabin against the
rail fence; and there the woody hill fell sharply away, past the barns,
the corn-crib, the stables and the tobacco-curing house, to a limpid
brook which sang along over its gravelly bed and curved and frisked in
and out and here and there and yonder in the deep shade of overhanging
foliage and vines--a divine place for wading, and it had swimming-pools,
too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For
we were little Christian children, and had early been taught the value
of forbidden fruit.

In the little log cabin lived a bedridden white-headed slave woman whom
we visited daily, and looked upon with awe, for we believed she was
upwards of a thousand years old and had talked with Moses. The younger
negroes credited these statistics, and had furnished them to us in good
faith. We accommodated all the details which came to us about her; and
so we believed that she had lost her health in the long desert trip
coming out of Egypt, and had never been able to get it back again. She
had a round bald place on the crown of her head, and we used to creep
around and gaze at it in reverent silence, and reflect that it was
caused by fright through seeing Pharaoh drowned. We called her "Aunt"
Hannah, Southern fashion. She was superstitious like the other negroes;
also, like them, she was deeply religious. Like them, she had great
faith in prayer, and employed it in all ordinary exigencies, but not in
cases where a dead certainty of result was urgent. Whenever witches were
around she tied up the remnant of her wool in little tufts, with white
thread, and this promptly made the witches impotent.

All the negroes were friends of ours, and with those of our own age we
were in effect comrades. I say in effect, using the phrase as a
modification. We were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and
condition interposed a subtle line which both parties were conscious of,
and which rendered complete fusion impossible. We had a faithful and
affectionate good friend, ally and adviser in "Uncle Dan'l," a
middle-aged slave whose head was the best one in the negro quarter,
whose sympathies were wide and warm, and whose heart was honest and
simple and knew no guile. He has served me well, these many, many years.
I have not seen him for more than half a century, and yet spiritually I
have had his welcome company a good part