handkerchief from her bosom and began slowly to wipe the drops
of sweat from her face and neck. The acrid odour of her flesh reached
Cyrus, but he made no movement to draw away from her.

"I'se been laid up wid er stitch in my side, Marster, so I'se jes got
dese yer close done dis mawnin'. Dar wan' noner de chillen at home ter
tote um down yer, so I low I 'uz gwine ter drap by wid um on my way ter
church."

As he did not reply, she hesitated an instant and over her features,
which looked as if they had been flattened by a blow, there came an
expression which was half scornful, half inviting, yet so little
personal that it might have been worn by one of her treetop ancestors
while he looked down from his sheltering boughs on a superior species of
the jungle. The chance effect of light and shadow on a grey rock was
hardly less human or more primitive.

"I'se gittin' moughty well along, Marster," she said; "I reckon I'se
gittin' on toward a hunnard."

"Nonsense, Mandy, you ain't a day over thirty-five. There's a plenty of
life left in you yet."

"Go way f'om yer, Marster; you knows I'se a heap older 'n dat. How long
ago was hit I done fust come yer ter you all?"

He thought a moment. A question of calculation always interested him,
and he prided himself on his fine memory for dates.

"You came the year our son Henry died, didn't you? That was in
'66--eighteen years ago. Why, you couldn't have been over fifteen that
summer."

For the first time a look of cunning--of the pathetic cunning of a child
pitted against a man--awoke in her face.

"En Miss Lindy sent me off befo' de year was up, Marster. My boy Jubal
was born de mont' atter she done tu'n me out." She hesitated a minute,
and then added, with a kind of savage coquetry, "I 'uz a moughty likely
gal, Marster. You ain't done furgit dat, is you?"

Her words touched Cyrus like the flick of a whip on a sore, and he drew
back quickly while his thin lips grew tight.

"You'd better take that basket into the house," he said sharply.

In the negress's face an expression of surprise wavered for a second and
then disappeared. Her features resumed their usual passive and humble
look--a look which said, if Cyrus could have read human nature as easily
as he read finance, "I don't understand, but I submit without
understanding. Am I not what you have made me? Have I not been what you
wanted? And yet you despise me for being the thing you made."

"I didn't mean nuttin',