s,
baking himself, he might have been one of his own ancestors of the
African forest, for he was desperately black, and true to type. A runty
little spindle-legged darky of thirteen, Lazarus had come to us
second-hand, so to speak, from the county home. A family in the
neighborhood was breaking up, and Lazarus's temporary adoption in the
household was at an end. He had come on an errand one evening, and our
interview then had led to his being transferred to our account.

"I goin' away nex' week," he said.

"Where are you going, Lazarus?"

"Back to de home, where I come from."

"What do you get for your work where you are now?"

"Boa'd and clo's an' whatever dey min' to give."

"What do you do?"

"Bring wood, wash dishes, and whatever dey wants me to."

"How would you like to come up here for a while?"

He had his eye on my target-rifle as he replied, "Yassah, I'd like
it--what sort o' gun yo' got?"

I explained my firearm to him and let him handle it. His willingness to
come grew.

"Are you a pretty good boy, Lazarus?"

"Oh, yassah--is--is yo' goin' to le' me shoot yo' gun ef I come?"

"Very likely, but never mind that now. What happens if you're not good?"

He eyed me rather furtively. "De rule is yo cain't whip," he said. "You
kin only send back to de home."

We agreed on these terms, and Lazarus arrived the day after the auction
that closed out his former employers. As an aside I may mention that Old
Pop laid off a day to attend the said auction, and bought a pink
chenille portiere and a Japanese screen.

I want to be fair to Lazarus, and I confess, before going farther, that
I think we did not rate him at his worth. He had artistic value--he was
good literary material. I feel certain of that now, and I think I
vaguely realized it at the time. But I was not at the moment doing
anything in color, and for other purposes he was not convincing. His
dish-washing was far from brilliant and his sweeping was a mess. Also,
his appetite for bringing wood had grown dull. There is an old saying
which closely associates a colored person with a wood-pile, but our
particular Senegambian was not of that variety. The only time he really
cared for wood was when it was blazing in the big fireplace, and the
picture he made in front of it was about all that we thought valuable.
It is true that he made a good audience and would accompany me to the
fuel-heap and openly admire and praise my strength in handling the big