, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the
year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe
as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The
night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the
cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was
singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more
thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.
Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I
calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the
same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in
infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the
prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of
the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the
visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the spaciousness of the
country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few
nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had
said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle
released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont
as barriers to his vision. "He is nearly your age," said Zoe; "only two
years older. You will like him; every one does. No one can talk like him
that I have ever heard."....

At last I brought forward the subject of our father's will. Zoe was
silent for a moment, for my specific question was what she wished to
have done. Then she said: "It's all foolishness. These lawyers here have
been bothering me to get me to fight the will, and trying to get me to
break the will because my pa drank. I know he drank, but I don't see
what difference that makes. He always knew what he was doing, so far as
I know; and even if he didn't I'd never say nothin' about it. I know my
place; and things is gettin' worse about colored folks, and less chance
for a colored girl to marry a white man even if she wanted to,
'specially if I knew he was marryin' me to get my land. I'm satisfied
with the will the way it is and always have been, or any way you want
it, Mr. James. I know my place, and that there is a kind of curse on me
for bein' dark skinned; and I think my pa was mighty kind to make the
will the way he did. This 5000 acres he left is worth a lot of money,
more than $5000 Mr. Reverdy says; and if I had what the will