Ye cayn't tell me thar ain't a heap at the back
o' that. They say D'Willerby's jest give himself up to her ever since,
an' 'tain't no wonder, nuther, for she's a' out 'n out beauty, ain't she,
now? Just look at her eyes. Why don't ye eat yer apple, honey?"

Sheba turned towards the window and looked out on the porch. A
bewildering sense of desolation had fallen upon her.

"I don't want it," she said; and her small voice had a strange sound even
in her own ears. "I want Uncle Tom. Let me go out on the porch and see if
he's coming."

She saw them exchange rapid glances and was troubled afresh by it.

"D'ye reckin she understands?" the younger daughter said, cautiously.

"Lordy, no!" answered the mother; "we ain't said nothin'. Ye kin go ef ye
want to, Sheba," she added, cheerfully. "Thar's a little rocking-cheer
that ye kin set in. Help her down, Luce."

But she had already slipped down and found her way to the door opening
out on to the street. The porch was deserted for a wonder, the reason
being that an unusually interesting case was being argued in the
Court-house across the street, where groups of men were hanging about the
doors. The rocking-chair stood in a corner, but Sheba did not sit down in
it. She went to the steps and stood there, looking out with a sense of
pain and loneliness still hanging over her; and at last, without knowing
why, only feeling that they had a dreary sound and contained a mystery
which somehow troubled her, she began to say over softly the words the
woman had used.

"She died and he went away, nobody knows where. She died and he went
away, nobody knows where."

Why those words should have clung to her and made her feel for the moment
desolate and helpless, it would be difficult to say, but as she repeated
them half unconsciously, the figures of the woman who had died and the
man who had wandered so far away alone, that he seemed to have wandered
out of life itself, cast heavy shadows on her childish heart.

"I am glad," she whispered, "that it was not Uncle Tom that went away."
And she looked up the street with an anxious sigh.

Just at this moment she became conscious that she was not alone. In
bending forward that she might see the better, she caught sight of
someone leaning against the balustrades which had before concealed
him--the boy, in short, who was standing just as he had stood when they
drove up, and who looked as handsome in a darkling way as human boy could
look.