But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods,
to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly
soughed him welcome.

After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field,
sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten
rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came
to Burgin.

The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked
down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth,
but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face
and manner.

"Have a lif'?" he asked.

Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old
home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and
bedraggled.

"I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same."

Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the
brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked
strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his
direction over shoulders, saying:

"See de po' white trash man, walkin' home!"

But there were some Bob Whites singing in the bushes over the rail
fences, singing, singing!

A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen
switch of a blackberry bush, the switch bent earthward, the bird flew
off and the twig bent back again.

At sight of him ground squirrels sped into the underbrush.

Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences little negroes sang.
They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say:

"Po' white!"

Now that he was so near to Celia his heart misgave him. How would she
receive him, coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, footsore
tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, footsore and tired! So tired!

He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the
scornful negroes who had engendered them.

A mile from Harrodsburg he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow
hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him.

"That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons," she said to her husband, who
smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles
and so supported the family.

She was the girl who had called good-by after Celia years before, when
she left for her journey to the West and the Magic City.

* * * * *

It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate.

A woman sat alone o