real or was she dreaming?
Was she, Shirley Dandridge, really galloping down an open road at
midnight--because of the hare-brained maunderings of a half-mad old
negro?

The great iron gate of Damory Court hung open, and scarcely slackening
her pace, she rode through and up the long drive. The glooming
house-front was blank and silent and its huge porch columns looked like
lonely gray monoliths in the wan light. Not a twinkle showed at chink
or cranny; the ponderous shutters were closed. There was a sense of
desertion, of emptiness about the place that brought her heart into
her throat with a sickly horrible feeling of certainty.

She jumped down from the blowing horse and hurried around the house. The
door of the kitchens was open and a ladder of dim reddish light fell
from it across the grass. She ran swiftly and looked in. A huddled
figure sat there, rocking to and fro in the lamplight.

"Aunt Daph," she called, "what is the matter?"

The turbaned head turned sharply toward her. "Dat yo', Miss Shirley?"
the old woman said huskily. "Is yo' come ter see Mars' John 'fo' he
gwine away? Yo' too late, honey, too late! He done gone ter de deepo fo'
ter ketch de thoo train. En, oh, honey, Ah knows in mah ole ha'at dat
Mars' John ain' nevah gwine come back ter Dam'ry Co'ot no mo'!"

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE

Along the dark turnpike John Valiant rode with his chin sunk on his
breast. He was wretchedly glad of the darkness, for it covered a
thousand familiar sights he had grown to love. Yet through the dark
came drifting sounds that caught at him with clutching hands--the bay
of a hound from some far-off kennel, the whirring note of frogs, the
impatient high whinny of a horse across pasture-bars--and his nostrils
widened to the wild braided fragrance of the fields over which the mist
was spinning its fairy carded wool.

The preparations for his going had been quickly made. He was leaving
behind him all but a single portmanteau. Uncle Jefferson had already
taken this--with Chum--to the station. The old man had now gone
sorrowfully afoot to the blockhouse, a half-mile up the track, to
bespeak the stopping of the express. He would go back on the horse his
master was riding.

The lonely little depot flanked a siding beside a dismal stretch of
yellow clay-bank gouged by rains. Its windows were dark and the
weather-beaten plank platform was illuminated by a single lantern
that hung on a nail besid