ith a carven face and
thick gray hair.

"Your servant, mistress," he said, with a sweeping bow as he strode
toward the swamp. Miss Taylor stopped him, for he looked interesting,
and might answer some of her brother's questions. He turned back and
stood regarding her with sorrowful eyes and ugly mouth.

"Do you live about here?" she asked.

"I'se lived here a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it;
he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety--indeed, there was about him
that indefinable sense of age--some shadow of endless living; but a
hundred seemed absurd.

"You know the people pretty well, then?"

"I knows dem all. I knows most of 'em better dan dey knows demselves. I
knows a heap of tings in dis world and in de next."

"This is a great cotton country?"

"Dey don't raise no cotton now to what dey used to when old Gen'rel
Cresswell fust come from Carolina; den it was a bale and a half to the
acre on stalks dat looked like young brushwood. Dat was cotton."

"You know the Cresswells, then?"

"Know dem? I knowed dem afore dey was born."

"They are--wealthy people?"

"Dey rolls in money and dey'se quality, too. No shoddy upstarts dem,
but born to purple, lady, born to purple. Old Gen'ral Cresswell had
niggers and acres no end back dere in Carolina. He brung a part of dem
here and here his son, de father of dis Colonel Cresswell, was born. De
son--I knowed him well--he had a tousand niggers and ten tousand acres
afore de war."

"Were they kind to their slaves?"

"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're niggers and wouldn't
let de drivers whip 'em much."

"And these Cresswells today?"

"Oh, dey're quality--high-blooded folks--dey'se lost some land and
niggers, but, lordy, nuttin' can buy de Cresswells, dey naturally owns
de world."

"Are they honest and kind?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--dey'se good white folks."

"Good white folk?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--course you knows white folks will be white
folks--white folks will be white folks. Your servant, ma'am." And the
swamp swallowed him.

The boy's eyes followed him as he whipped up the horse.

"He's going to Elspeth's," he said.

"Who is he?"

"We just call him Old Pappy--he's a preacher, and some folks say a
conjure man, too."

"And who is Elspeth?"

"She lives in the swamp--she's a kind of witch, I reckon, like--like--"

"Like Medea?"

"Yes--only--I don't know--" and he grew thoughtful.

The road turned now and far away to t