n'?"

For years the colonel had belonged to a fishing club, which preserved
an ice-cold stream in a Northern forest. For years the choicest fruits
of all the earth had been served daily upon his table. Yet as he
looked back to-day no shining trout that had ever risen to his fly had
stirred his emotions like the diaphanous minnows, caught, with a
crooked pin, in the crooked creek; no luscious fruit had ever matched
in sweetness the sour grapes and bitter nuts gathered from the native
woods--by him and Peter in their far-off youth.

"Yas, suh, yas, suh," Peter went on, "an' 'member dat time you an'
young Mars Jim Wilson went huntin' and fishin' up de country
tergether, an' got ti'ed er waitin' on yo'se'ves an' writ back fer me
ter come up ter wait on yer and cook fer yer, an' ole Marster say he
did n' dare ter let me go 'way off yander wid two keerliss boys lak
you-all, wid guns an' boats fer fear I mought git shot, er drownded?"

"It looked, Peter, as though he valued you more than me! more than his
own son!"

"Yas, suh, yas, suh! sho' he did, sho' he did! old Marse Philip wuz a
monstus keerful man, an' _I_ wuz winth somethin', suh, dem times; I
wuz wuth five hundred dollahs any day in de yeah. But nobody would n'
give five hundred cents fer me now, suh. Dey'd want pay fer takin' me,
mos' lakly. Dey ain' none too much room fer a young nigger no mo', let
'lone a' ol' one."

"And what have you been doing all these years, Peter?" asked the
colonel.

Peter's story was not a thrilling one; it was no tale of inordinate
ambition, no Odyssey of a perilous search for the prizes of life, but
the bald recital of a mere struggle for existence. Peter had stayed by
his master until his master's death. Then he had worked for a
railroad contractor, until exposure and overwork had laid him up with
a fever. After his recovery, he had been employed for some years at
cutting turpentine boxes in the pine woods, following the trail of the
industry southward, until one day his axe had slipped and wounded him
severely. When his wound was healed he was told that he was too old
and awkward for the turpentine, and that they needed younger and more
active men.

"So w'en I got my laig kyo'ed up," said the old man, concluding his
story, "I come back hyuh whar I wuz bo'n, suh, and whar my w'ite folks
use' ter live, an' whar my frien's use' ter be. But my w'ite folks wuz
all in de graveya'd, an' most er my frien's wuz dead er moved away,
an'