a black bottle
from a high shelf, and set out with Cicely across the cornfield, toward
the wounded man.
As they went through the corn Cicely recalled part of her dream. She had
dreamed that under some strange circumstances--what they had been was
still obscure--she had met a young man--a young man whiter than she and
yet not all white--and that he had loved her and courted her and married
her. Her dream had been all the sweeter because in it she had first
tasted the sweetness of love, and she had not recalled it before because
only in her dream had she known or thought of love as something
supremely desirable.
With the memory of her dream, however, her fears revived. Dreams were
solemn things. To Cicely the fabric of a vision was by no means
baseless. Her trouble arose from her not being able to recall, though
she was well versed in dream-lore, just what event was foreshadowed by a
dream of finding a wounded man. If the wounded man were of her own race,
her dream would thus far have been realized, and having met the young
man, the other joys might be expected to follow. If he should turn out
to be a white man, then her dream was clearly one of the kind that go by
contraries, and she could expect only sorrow and trouble and pain as the
proper sequences of this fateful discovery.
II
The two women reached the fence that separated the cornfield from the
pine woods.
"How is I gwine ter git ovuh dat fence, chile?" asked the old woman.
"Wait a minute, granny," said Cicely; "I 'll take it down."
It was only an eight-rail fence, and it was a matter of but a few
minutes for the girl to lift down and lay to either side the ends of the
rails that formed one of the angles. This done, the old woman easily
stepped across the remaining two or three rails. It was only a moment
before they stood by the wounded man. He was lying still, breathing
regularly, and seemingly asleep.
"What is he, granny," asked the girl anxiously, "a w'ite man, or not?"
Old Dinah pushed back the matted hair from the wounded man's brow, and
looked at the skin beneath. It was fairer there, but yet of a decided
brown. She raised his hand, pushed back the tattered sleeve from his
wrist, and then she laid his hand down gently.
"Mos' lackly he 's a mulatter man f'om up de country somewhar. He don'
look lack dese yer niggers roun' yere, ner yet lack a w'ite man. But de
po' boy's in a bad fix, w'ateber he is, an' I 'spec's we bettah do w'at
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