"I gwine kyar dis to him."

"Well, I kin cook you anurr when we come back," said his wife, with
ready acquiescence.

In a few minutes they were on the way, going single file down the path
through the sassafras, along which little Eph and his followers had
come an hour before, the man in the lead and his wife following, and,
according to the custom of their race, carrying the bundles, one the
surrendered supper and the other the neatly folded and well-patched
shirt in which Ole 'Stracted hoped to meet his long-expected loved
ones.

As they came in sight of the ruinous little hut which had been the old
man's abode since his sudden appearance in the neighborhood a few years
after the war, they observed that the bench beside the door was
deserted, and that the door stood ajar--two circumstances which neither
of them remembered ever to have seen before; for in all the years in
which he had been their neighbor Ole 'Stracted had never admitted any
one within his door, and had never been known to leave it open. In mild
weather he occupied a bench outside, where he either cobbled shoes for
his neighbors, accepting without question anything they paid him, or
else sat perfectly quiet, with the air of a person waiting for some
one. He held only the briefest communication with anybody, and was
believed by some to have intimate relations with the Evil One, and his
tumble-down hut, which he was particular to keep closely daubed, was
thought by such as took this view of the matter to be the temple where
he practiced his unholy rites. For this reason, and because the little
cabin, surrounded by dense pines and covered with vines which the
popular belief held "pizenous," was the most desolate abode a human
being could have selected, most of the dwellers in that section gave
the place a wide berth, especially toward nightfall, and Ole 'Stracted
would probably have suffered but for the charity of Ephraim and his
wife, who, although often wanting the necessaries of life themselves,
had long divided it with their strange neighbor. Yet even they had
never been admitted inside his door, and knew no more of him than the
other people about the settlement knew.

His advent in the neighborhood had been mysterious. The first that was
known of him was one summer morning, when he was found sitting on the
bench beside the door of this cabin, which had long been unoccupied and
left to decay. He was unable to give any account of himself, except