e-tops into the lavender of the coming day. It
looked like a great brooding white hen setting in a nest of radiant
woods, and I felt like a little cold chicken as Sam led the way through
the low, wide door for me to creep under the sheltering wings. In about
two seconds we were all sheltered in complete comfort. At a huge fire
that was a great glow of oak coals old Mammy Kitty, who had
superintended Sam's birth and childhood, as well as "neighbored" mine,
was gently stirring a mixture that smelled like the kind of breakfast
nectar they must have in heaven, while she also balanced a steaming
coffee-pot on a pair of crossed green sticks at one corner of the
chimney. In the ashes I could see little mounds which I afterward found
to be flaky, nutty com-pones, and I flew to kneel at her side with my
head on her gaudy neckerchief.

"Dah, dah, dah, child," she crooned, as she smiled a queer, loving, old
smile that showed me how glad she was to see me, but never another word
did she utter. I almost never remember hearing Mammy say an articulate
word; but all children and those grown up who have any child left in
their hearts can understand her croon. It is cradle music--to the
initiated.

"Mammy's rheumatism is mighty bad, but she can still shake up corn ash
cake and chicken hash with the best," said Sam, coming over to warm his
hands and tower above us, while Byrd volunteered to lead Dr. Chubb out
to what he called the wash-up bench on the back porch.

I looked up at Sam as he stood above me in a mingling of fire-glow and
the early morning light with his low-beamed, deep-toned humble home as a
background, and he--he loomed.

"I--I love this place," I positively gasped, as I moved still closer to
Mammy and stirred the spoon in the pot of hash.

"Shelter, fire, a chicken in the pot, and a woman crouched on the hearth
stirring it--what more could any man want or get, no matter how he
worked?" answered Sam, as he looked down at me with the smolder in his
blue-flecked hazel eyes to which Peter had once written a poem called
"On the Gridiron."

"Yes, but what would you do if you didn't have Mammy?" I ventured back,
as I bent across Mammy's knee and began to stir more vigorously while
she shook up her coffee-pot and raked a few last coals over the cakes
for their complete browning. "You always were a good provider, Sam," I
added, under the excitement of the bubbling over of the coffee.

"Yes, locusts for hollyhock children an