good in you, arter
all--I don' kyeer ef you an' Marse John do toddy too much at times!"
Then, quite suddenly, she asked aloud: "Who sont you back heah dis
time?" His first visit she might have attributed to Jane, but Jane had
now been gone half an hour. She began to think he had not heard, for he
continued walking away; but, at last, his voice came through the gloom:

"The gardener."

"De gyard'ner!" she tried to reach him with her eyes. "What's de use of
talkin' dat a-way! De gyard'ner don' never come nigh de house!"

There was another silence. She knew he had stopped now; she knew he was
still close in front of the cottage, but her eyes were too poor to make
him out in the gathering darkness.

"That's just the trouble, Aunt Timmie," she heard him say. "We don't
often let the gardener come in to keep things trim and decent!"

She followed this thought with perfect understanding, for allegory was a
part of her racial inheritance. She was touched, also, by the soft
timbre of his voice--a quality which showed him to be deeply moved--and
she leaned farther forward, peering out at him. There was something
weird, and something fascinating, about these impressive words issuing
from an unseen and unexpected source. The night was so still and
ghostlike--the atmosphere about the cottage so charged with tragedy--the
metonymy this invisible speaker employed so subtle!

"Whar's yoh gyard'ner?" she asked breathlessly.

"I don't know," he gave a short laugh.

"Well, he ain' so ve'y fur off, honey! Go an' seek 'im--you needs 'im,
Gawd knows you does!--but mebbe he won' find sich a turr'ble lot of wu'k
to do, arter all! Sometimes people's gyardens is cu'ious dat a-way!"

He left after this, and walked slowly beyond the house to the circle of
cedars. As he was pushing aside the branches, his eyes detected
something white, out near the gate, moving through the deep shadows of
the trees. He stopped, puzzled. A faint radiance from the stars made the
spot where he stood quite discernible and, now seeing him, this white
thing, whatever it was, changed its course and approached. As it came he
saw that it seemed to be stumbling, or staggering, and he thought that
it was moaning. Then suddenly he recognized Jane.

In a bound he was across the intervening space and, as she stumbled
again, caught her in his arms, crying hoarsely:

"For God's sake, what has happened?"

She clung to him, drooping, sobbing, and out of breath; and fierce