ght,
Seventh star I've seen to-night;
I wish I may and I wish I might
Have the wish come true I wish to-night."

Then he made his wish again, with a heart felt earnestness that was
almost an ache. Oh, surely the day was not going to end in this cruel
silence! Just then he heard the thud of a horse's hoofs on the wooden
bridge, far down the road. Nearer and louder it came. Somebody was
prancing by at last. He stood up, straining his eyes in his smiling
eagerness to see. Nearer and nearer the hoof-beats came in the
starlight. "_Bookity book! Bookity book!_" The horseman paused a moment
in front of Uncle Billy's.

John Jay hopped from one foot to the other in his impatient gladness.
Then his heart sank as the hoof-beats went on down the road, _Bookity
book! Bookity book!_ growing fainter and fainter, until at last they
were drowned by the voices of the noisy katydids.

He stood still a moment, so bitterly disappointed that it seemed to him
he could not possibly bear it. Then he went in and shut the door,--shut
the door on all his bright hopes, on all his fond dreams, on the day
that was to have held such happiness, but that had brought instead the
cruelest disappointment of his life.

The tears ran down his little black face as he undressed himself. He sat
on the edge of the trundle-bed a moment, whispering brokenly, "They
wasn't anybody livin' that cared 'bout it's bein' my buthday!" Then
throwing himself face downward on his pillow, he cried softly with long
choking sobs, until he fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI.

Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very
little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes.

"Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy," sighed Mammy. "It
slides right off'n him like watah off a duck's back."

"He's like the rollin' stone that gethah's no moss," remarked Uncle
Billy. "He goes rollickin' through the days, from sunup 'twel sundown,
so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo' they kin
strike root."

Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times
with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all
around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days
especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the
Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the
Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue.

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