about, another affliction, the
nervous motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young
Negro wench who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that her
blind baby was 'not right' in his head, and she was ashamed of him. She
loved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his
'fidgets,' that she hid him away from people. All the dainties she
brought down from the Big House were for the blind child, and she beat
and cuffed her other children whenever she found them teasing him or
trying to get his chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early,
remembered everything he heard, and his mammy said he 'wasn't all
wrong.' She named him Samson, because he was blind, but on the
plantation he was known as 'yellow Martha's simple child.' He was docile
and obedient, but when he was six years old he began to run away from
home, always taking the same direction. He felt his way through the
lilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up to the south wing of the Big House,
where Miss Nellie d'Arnault practised the piano every morning. This
angered his mother more than anything else he could have done; she was
so ashamed of his ugliness that she couldn't bear to have white folks
see him. Whenever she caught him slipping away from the cabin, she
whipped him unmercifully, and told him what dreadful things old Mr.
d'Arnault would do to him if he ever found him near the Big House. But
the next time Samson had a chance, he ran away again. If Miss d'Arnault
stopped practising for a moment and went toward the window, she saw this
hideous little pickaninny, dressed in an old piece of sacking,
standing in the open space between the hollyhock rows, his body
rocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and wearing an
expression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha that
the child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish,
happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing was
nearly all he had--though it did not occur to her that he might have
more of it than other children.

One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie was playing her
lesson to her music-teacher. The windows were open. He heard them get up
from the piano, talk a little while, and then leave the room. He heard
the door close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuck
his head in: there was no one there. He could always detect the presence
of anyone in a room. He put one f