out.

"Sometimes, ma'm" said Jasper speaking to Mrs. Mayfield, "the laziest
man ain't got no time to stay no longer."

"Well, I wouldn't make light of it," remarked Margaret.

"No lighter than I can help. I reckon we'd better eat a snack an' then
Jim, you may preach to them bees."

CHAPTER XIV.

AN OLD MAN PREACHED.

Several days passed and Peters was seen no more about the Starbuck
place, but the old man knew that the scoundrel had not surrendered his
scheme, but merely was lying low, waiting for his appointment as deputy
marshall. Such an office was not hard to get. The danger attending it
often made material scarce, for higher among the hills where the
rebellious spirit of man had never failed to gaze with defiant contempt
into the eye of the law, the distiller's blood smeared the rock and the
deputy, if not taken away by friends, was left to the buzzard. So,
whether or not trouble was on the road to meet old Jasper, depended upon
a piece of paper, to be written and stamped in the capital of the State.
But something else soon arose to claim the sympathetic attention of the
household.

One morning Lou came running into the house almost breathless, with the
excited words that old mammy was dying in her cabin. They all of them
hastened to her bedside, and when she saw the old man kneeling upon the
floor, she put forth her mummied hand and left it rest upon his head.

"I's gwine tell de Lawd erbout de folks down yere," were her last words,
and from the woods they brought wild flowers and among them she slept,
black sentiment of a hallowed past--a past of slavery, but of love. More
than treasured heirlooms, of rusty swords which, once bright, had
flashed in gallant hands; more than tress of hair, tipped with gold and
ribbon-bound; more than old love-letters, books or fading picture of
serenest face--more than all else does the old black mother bind us to
the sunny days of yore. Beneath a tree, where at evening when the sun
was low often had she sat watching the cows as home they came from the
cane-breaks in the bottoms, they dug her grave; and from all about, from
fern-fringed coves and knobs where the scrub oak grew, the people came,
old men and women to pay their respects to this bit of another age,
going home--and the children, came wonderingly, curious, with pictures
of witches in their fertile minds. The sermon was preached by an old
negro nearing ninety. At the head of the grave he stood and cast h