d won't hear. A woman has
been here, a little old woman, and she sat on the bed and told me some
things. She told me that Tina had cut off a piece of my hair and hid it
in a gum-tree in the swamp, and that I never would be well till my hair
was found.

"I remember the night she combed my hair, and how Mauma Amy said it was
bad luck to comb hair after dark; it was so thick and long then, and it
has come out so since." She drew the long thin brown braid between her
fingers. "Why should Tina want to hurt me? The only harm I ever did her
was to love her."

She burst into tears, and Religion hugged her in mute sympathy; that
was her only way to comfort. When Min was quiet, she stirred up the
pillows and smoothed out the white spread. Then she took a tin cup full
of clabber, poured a little syrup upon it, and ate it heartily. A plate
of greens was hot on the hearth, and a corn-cake was browning
beautifully in the bake-kettle. But there was no time to eat the
dainties.

John Robinson, the owner of Hermitage, was a single man. He was old,
feeble, and notoriously grasping, yet the dirty, ill-smelling room which
Religion entered was strewn with choicest books, sheets of music lay on
the table and chairs, and several rare violins lay on a piano, whose
mother-of-pearl keys glowed in the red firelight.

"Who's that?" he called, in a cracked old voice, the instant he heard
Religion's footsteps. He was wrapped in a cloak and sunk in an arm-chair
before the fire.

"Me, Marse John--Minnie's Religion. I've come to pay the rent."

"Oh, come in, girl! Down, Bull!" he piped to a great hound that was
slowly rising from a sheepskin. "It's fifty cents. Sure you've got it
all, and no nickels with holes in them?"

She placed a little tobacco-bag in his hand, and he leaned forward to
the light to count the money. He had a sharp, pinched old face
surrounded by shaggy white hair. A portrait of him taken in a long-past
day hung over the fireplace. In that he was a handsome man, with thick
chestnut-brown hair. His hands shook so that the pieces of money dropped
from them and rolled upon the brick hearth. A tall mulatto woman came
from a near room and picked them up.

"Count it over again, Tina," he commanded, "and see if it's all there
and no holes in it. You can't trust Religion herself with money. How's
your sister?"

"Min ain't no better; she ain't never going to be no better in this
world."

"Tut, tut!" he muttered. "There should be