But it was six months ago that he had condemned her, and since then the
subtle modifications had worked in his habit of thought. As the soreness
passed from his heart, he had nursed the scar much as a crusader might
have cherished a wound out of the Holy Wars. From the actual conditions
of life in which he had loved her, he now beheld her caught up into the
zone of ideal and impossible beauty. Through the outer covering of her
flesh he could see her soul shine, as the stars shone through the web of
purple twilight on the marshes. From his earlier craving for possession,
his love had grown, through frustration and disappointment, into a
simpler passion for service.

"Well, one has to find out things," he said to himself on this November
morning, while he watched the old negro at his work. Some red leaves
whirled into his face, and the wind, lifting the dark hair from his
forehead, showed three heavy furrows between his knitted brows. He
appeared a little older, a little braver, a little wiser, yet there was
about him still the look of superb physical vitality which had been the
result of a youth spent in the open fields.

"Howdy, Uncle Boaz," he said to the old negro, who approached with his
wheelbarrow. "Your folks have all gone away for good haven't they?"

"Hit looks dat ar way, marster, hit sutney do look dat ar way."

"Well, you keep good grass here all the same."

"Dar ain' but one way ter do hit, suh, en dat's ter dung hit," replied
Uncle Boaz, and he remarked a minute afterwards, as he put down the
lowered handles of the wheel barrow, and stood prodding the ashes in his
pipe, "I'se gwinter vote fur you, Marse Abel, I sholy is---"

"Thank you, Uncle Boaz!"

"En I'se got a sack er co'n I'd be moughty bleeged ter git ground up fur
hominy meal---"

With a laugh Abel passed on through the side-garden, and entered the
leafless shrubbery that bordered the Haunt's Walk. The old negro had
disturbed his dream, which had been of Molly in her red stockings, with
the red ribbon binding her curls. Then he thought of Spot, the aged
hound--"That dog must have lived to be seventeen years old," he said
aloud in the effort to smother the sharp pang at his heart, "I remember
how fond old Reuben was of him even as a puppy. He would never let him
run hares with anybody except himself." It was seventeen years ago that
Spot was a puppy and he a boy--and now the one was dust with old Reuben,
and the other had settled down so effe