, with an honesty which was relieved from crudeness by her
physical dignity, "they are hardly fit to eat because there has been so
little frost yet."

"Well, I'm sorry for that, Miss Keren-happuch, or shall it be Blossom?"

"I like Blossom better," she answered shyly, lifting her scant calico
skirt with one hand as she mounted the stile.

"Then good night, lovely Blossom," he called gaily while he turned
back into the bridle path which led like a frayed white seam over the
pasture.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH MR. GAY ARRIVES AT HIS JOURNEY'S END

Broad and low, with the gabled pediment of the porch showing through
boughs of oaks, and a flight of bats wheeling over the ivied roof, the
house appeared to Gay beyond a slight swell in the meadows. The grove
of oaks, changing from dark red to russet, was divided by a short
walk, bordered by clipped box, which led to the stone steps and to two
discoloured marble urns on which broken-nosed Cupids were sporting. As
he was about to slip his reins over the back of an iron chair on the
lawn, a shriek in a high pitched negro voice pierced his ears from a
half shuttered dormer-window in the east wing.

"Fo' de Lawd, hit's de ha'nt er ole marster! Yessuh--Yessuh,--I'se
a-comin'--I'se a-comin'."

The next instant the window slammed with a bang, and the sound of flying
footsteps echoed through the darkened interior of the house.

"Open the door, you fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only
response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters
somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing
bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the
chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant
windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background
of oaks. His mother and his aunt, he concluded, were doubtless away for
their winter's shopping, so lifting his horse's head from the grass, he
passed between the marble urns and the clipped box, and followed a path,
deep in leaves, which led from the west wing of the house to the outside
kitchen beyond a paved square at the back. Half intelligible words
floated to him as he approached, and from an old pear-tree near the door
there was a flutter of wings where a brood of white turkeys settled to
roost. Beyond the bole of the tree a small negro in short skirts was
"shooin'" a large rooster into the henhouse, but at the muffled fall of