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marry a girl after she had given herself to him. Somehow it was a condescension on his part, a stooping. But he loved her. The thought that he could sacrifice himself by marrying her filled him with a sort of high pleasure. He really was a noble fellow. The villagers might jibe, as they were sure to do, but he would stoop and rescue a weak girl from their clamour!

He strode along in quite a cavalierish mood, when he saw a Negro coming up the road at a slow trot, head tucked down, arms drawn up for long-distance running.

Now it is the invariable practice of any white man in the rural districts of the South to stop any running Negro and question him closely as to why he is running, whence he came, and whither he means to go. It is a relic of the apprehension of runaway slaves.

Abner acted according to this custom. He put aside his own anxieties, placed himself in the middle of the road ready to fight or chase as the exigency of the occasion might demand; then he called roughly, "Hey, nigger, where you goin'?"

The black boy started as if someone had fired a gun under his nose; flung up head with white eyes.

"N-nowhere, suh!"

"You're in a hell of a rush to go nowhere—" Then he broke off. "Well, I be damned, it's John! John, where in the hell are you goin'?"

At this turn the chore boy's fright changed to delight.

"Well, 'fo' God, if it ain't Mastuh Abnah! Mastuh Abnah, Ah sho is glad to see you!" He came up to Abner, apparently on the verge of embracing him.

"What's the matter?" asked Abner, stirred and somehow uneasy at John's emotion.

"Mastuh Abnah, Ah Jess seen Miss Nessie packin' her trunk." The chore boy's face was sorrow-stricken.

"Seen her packin' her trunk?"

"Yes, suh, she's goin' tuh haff tuh step out."

Abner stared. "The hell she does—where to?"