ad life.

You usually weren't sick, but if you were sick, it afforded you the
luxury of tea. Turpentine and caster oil composed the entire _materia
medica_. Turpentine was used for sore throats, cuts and bruises. Castor
oil was used for everything else except a major fracture which called
for the master sending in a doctor to the quarters.

Yes, the gov'mint men with the blue uniforms and the shiny brass buttons
had descended from the North on Athens--descended in spite of the
double-barrelled cannon that the little master and the little master's
men had tried on them. The blue clad invaders had come in despite of the
quick breast-works, and the new-fangled cannon, and Bob Toombs boast
that he "could beat the damn Yankees with corn-stalks before breakfast".
(If only they had fought that way--if only they had [HW: not] needed
grape-shot had enough to invent cannon mouths that spoke at the same
time and were meant to mow down men with a long chain--if only they had
not been able to fight long after Bull Run, and after breakfast!)

Yes, the Yankees had come over the classic hills of Athens (Athens that
had so many hills that she would have been named Rome except for her
first land-grant college,) had left, and had come again to stay, and to
bring freedom to John Cole and his kind.

This was six months after Lee and his palandins had laid down the
sword--the gallant, the unstained (but, alas, claimed Meade's batteries)
the unconstitutional sword. Six months had gone and freedom had come.

But John Cole, slave of Henry Hull, the banker, found that his freedom
was the freedom of "the big oak"--Athens famed tree-that-owns-itself. He
was free, but he had no way to go anywhere. He was rooted in the soil
and would stay fast rooted. He worked on with his master for 20 years,
without pay.

Did he believe, back in slavery time in "signs" and in "sayings"--that
the itching foot meant the journey to new lands--that the hound's
midnight threnody meant murder?

No, when he was a young buck and had managed the bad horses, he had had
no such beliefs. No, he was not superstitious. If the foot itched
something ought to be put on it (or taken off it)--and as to the hounds
yelping, nobody ever knew what dark-time foolishness a hound-dog might
be up to.

But he was old, now. Death always comes in the afternoon. He does
believe in things that have been proved. He does believe that a
squinch-owl's screeching ("V-o-o-o-d-o-o! W-h-o-o-o?